INTRO Matthew Keenan’s New Photographic Project for Men

THE ARTS

SNAPSHOTS OF CARDIFF’S CULTURAL LIFE

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

The aim of Matthew Keenan’s New Photographic Project for Men – shot as part of the first year of his postgraduate degree in documentary photography at the University of South Wales – was to photograph men in such a way that would destabilise the power dynamic of the traditional photographic transaction. “Historically, more often than not, women would be the object of a photographer’s gaze,” says the photographer, who lives in Plasnewydd. “To play with this idea, the sitters remained still while I arranged the shot and focused the camera. I used an old-school view camera, the type where you put a dark cloth over your head; this method was used to deliberately establish a heightened sense of being observed as the sitter was photographed and ultimately, objectified. As I could no longer access the facilities at university, due to Covid, I hurriedly bought chemistry and processing tanks to continue working from home. The negatives were processed and hung to dry in my bathroom before digitising with a borrowed scanner. For more: www.matthewkeenan.org