Richard Ffrench ’21

Richard Ffrench

My work focuses on the representation of the Black body in contemporary visual media. Particularly on how blackness, masculinity and vulnerability interact with each other in front of the camera. My photographs portray a more gentle side of masculinity that isn’t considered ‘normal’ in mainstream media by taking a break from the traditional gender roles that stigmatize sensuality and emotion in men. In doing so, they critique toxic masculinity by discarding it. There are ways to depict Black men that don’t feed into the sexualization of the Black body and the hyper-masculine ideals and stereotypes that have proven to be harmful to Black men, women and society as a whole. Contemporary media that focuses on these notions is unsurprisingly scarce, so I am adding to what there isn’t enough of.