Tainting the familiar, conventional meaning of masculinity, Richard Kranzin subjects the term under his authority, twisting the established theories of how men should act and look to the benefit of the modern lifestyle. Under his direction, he infuses fragility into the cornerstones of masculinity, a testament to his compendium “Nudes”.

Rippling through the pages of his photo book, men display their virtue, virility, and vulnerability to the Berlin-based photographer. They distance themselves from how social media depicts them: Greek Gods who need to sustain their muscular, toned bodies, and nothing less than that. As Richard photographs nude men, he brews up new wisdom over masculinity: men as soft and non-sexualized beings with nudity as the highest form of intimacy.

Why did you want to explore the fragility of the masculine?

I think it comes from my childhood when my father told me to act more “masculine.” Being more sensitive or “feminine” as a young boy seemed to be something I should be ashamed of. Sadly, a lot of men can relate to that. Growing up and coming out as gay, I did not hide my vulnerable side; I felt free. Today’s perception of masculinity is changing in cultures around the world. Being masculine is becoming a very fragile statement itself and is seen from many more perspectives nowadays and showing that in my work can help to spread a new perception of masculinity even further.

How do you perceive fragility? What relationship does it have with masculinity?

When I talk about fragility in relation to masculinity, I mean the common stereotypical thinking of what masculinity is and what happens when you do not act that way. When you look closely at the young men I photographed, you might see through their stereotyped, hard masculine shell and into their vulnerable souls. The stereotyped masculine façade becomes fragile when the models are nude and bare in front of my lens. They show themselves honestly and not disguised by outside influences.

How has the perception of masculinity changed over the years through your photographs?

When I started taking photos, I was inspired by commercialized fashion photography. I was a model myself, so I knew what the industry expected from male models and how they should look like in photos. In the 2010s their manhood and “masculinity” were viewed to resemble that of classical Greek Gods. I was always much more of an androgynous model and had the opportunity to show much more diversity and emotions in my poses than other male models. These influenced the way I started to shoot with my model friends who were not androgynous in the first place.

Having a form like a Greek sculpture does not tell a story itself. I wanted to look into the souls of the people, and I still do. While my models mostly have these classical beauty face with “masculine” model features, I always try to capture them as authentic, pure, and soulful as possible to make the difference.

Was the use of analog black and white photography in your compendium intentional? Why?

Black and white imagery gives a sense of timelessness. I love the melancholic and nostalgic air that surrounds it. In terms of creating soulful and pure images, black and white pictures help put the focus on the subject. NUDES is shot in analog black and white film intentionally. The analog image offers unpredictability and rawness and using it gives me a great feeling, so I use it in every shoot now. It separates itself from the digitalized fast world we live in.

You mentioned that your models are cut off from their commercialized self-representations on social media, from their digital identities. What discoveries did you find out about their self-representations in reality versus on social media through photography?

It was so interesting to meet my models for the first time. I only knew them from social media, so all I saw was how they presented themselves and how they wanted to be perceived. Talking with and getting personal with them in a short amount of time opened us up. Also, the nudity benefits an open conversation that I have with most of my models during a shooting. It lets me see into their souls, something that social media can never do. I hope my photos can capture the intimacy and trust that are built in these short moments last long.

As you describe your photobook: My pictures invite you to dream of masculinity without sin, honest and authentically sensuous. Why did you say, “without sin”? Is it sinful to dream of masculinity?

Masculinity can be full of sins when the world talks about toxic masculinity, abuse, roughness, sexism, and crime in general. In NUDES, I want to create a dream bubble in which men do none of these things, a reason my book is bright, with few contrasts, and feels very airy. I tried to show masculinity as a soft, non-sexualized statement – without sin, so to speak.

During the shoot, you decided which position, posture, look, and mood the finished picture and models should convey, thus evoking rawness and intimacy. How did you establish your relationship with your subjects?

As I mentioned earlier, it deals with a lot of speaking with and explaining my project to them. During the shooting, I kind of let the models go with the flow. Not all of the poses are instructed; I let them move, and I adjust my photos around the mood. What I did was I gave them a mood or feeling, even putting on some ambient music to get them into a melancholic mood. I see myself more as a director, encouraging the actor in a certain situation to take on spontaneity.

Speaking of intimacy, how do you perceive and define nudity? In what way does it relate to non-intimacy?

Nudity is the highest form of intimacy to me. I do not like it when it becomes non-intimate and only focused on showcasing oneself. Being nude on photographs should always come with an intimate and personal feeling to it.

After this project, what is next for Richard? Are you planning to continue with the project?

Thinking about the future gives me a lot of pressure. My inspiration always comes from a kind of nostalgia that honors the past. My posts on Instagram are mostly images from previous years. I love going through my archives instead of chasing trending photos for the likes. It drives most of my models crazy to wait for so long before I post, but that is just how I work.

I am still taking a lot of new photos, but I am not thinking about a future project yet. It might be next year; it might be in five years. What I do is I look at a body of work from the last few years and then figure out how I can present it as a cohesive collection. This is how my books BOYS IN NATURE and NUDES developed. In both cases, I realized that this could become a publication, two years after having already shot them.

One long-term project I am working on is my first feature film as a director, but writing a script is not that easy. To let you in on the development, adolescence, fragile masculinity, dreamy nostalgia, and intimate emotion will always be a part of my work.

I was living on the beach so we shot at magic hour as the sun was setting. The atmosphere on the beach was really quiet and beautiful. The whole experience seemed to be healing for everyone involved. We are aiming to raise money for homeless children in Venice Beach so any profits from the exhibition will go to a charity in Venice Beach called SPY (Safe Place for Youth).”

Luxury fashion online retailer Mytheresa is honoured to be a sponsor of the “Women in Abstraction” exhibition, to support and give recognition to female artists around the globe.

The “Women in Abstraction” exhibition, which should be presented at the Centre Pompidou from May 19th to August 23th 2021, offers a new take on the history of abstraction- from its origins to the 1980s- and brings together the specific contributions of around one hundred and ten “women artists”.

Luxury fashion online retailer Mytheresa is honoured to be a sponsor of the “Women in Abstraction” exhibition, to support and give recognition to female artists around the globe.

The “Women in Abstraction” exhibition, which will be presented at the Centre Pompidou from May 19th to August 23th 2021, offers a new take on the history of abstraction- from its origins to the 1980s- and brings together the specific contributions of around one hundred and ten “women artists”.

Christine Macel, Chief Curator, and Karolina Lewandowska, Curator for Photography, revisit this history, and highlight the processes that made these “women artists” invisible through a chronological survey combining fine arts, dance, photography, film and decorative arts. Echoing the French exhibition title (“Elles font l’abstraction”, i.e., “They/She make(s) abstraction”), the artists are presented as full-edged actors and co- reators of modernism and its a aftermath in their own right.

“Women in abstraction is an exhibition that aims to show how female artists have been major actors and co-creators of modernity and its a aftermath, how much they have contributed to the multidisciplinarity of abstraction and thus break the cloak of invisibility that still covers many of their key contributions ”, commented Christine Macel, Chief Curator.

The exhibition shows the decisive turning points that marked the history of Abstraction and questions its aesthetic canons without redefining a new one. It also goes beyond the idea of a history of art conceived as a succession of purely pioneering practices. By giving “women artists” a new place in this history, the exhibition demonstrates its complexity and diversity.

First of all, it makes an unprecedented foray into the 19th century with the rediscovery of Georgiana Hough- ton’s work from the 1860s, undermining the chronological origins of abstraction by tracing it back to its spiritualist roots. It then shines a spotlight on key figures through mini monographs highlighting artists who have been little shown in Europe or unfairly eclipsed. It focuses particularly on the specific educational, social and institutional contexts that surrounded and encouraged or, conversely, hindered the recognition of “women artists”. The exhibition reveals why many “women artists” did not necessarily seek recognition. It considers the positions of the artists themselves, with all their complexities and paradoxes. Some, like Sonia Delaunay-Terk, adopted a non-gendered position while others, like Judy Chicago, laid claim to a feminine art.

This female version of history challenges the limitation of the study of abstraction to painting alone, which is one of the reasons why many women have been excluded, as the specific modernist approach rejected the spiritualist, ornamental and performative dimensions of abstraction. The perspective is also a global one that includes the modernities of Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, not to men on the African-American artists whose multiple voices only benefited from certain visibility from the early 1970s onwards to tell their story with sever-al voices and reach beyond the Western canon. The scenography includes documentary spaces devoted to founding exhibitions, key women actors of abstraction and celebrated critics, particularly within the feminist struggles of the 1970s and their postmodern interpretation.

Hilde van Mas and FJBAUR transform WURST into a living sculpture at the interface of art and fashion in a photographic-sculptural-textile way. The body is set in a deep blue, watery and heavenly at the same time: LE GRAND BLEU as a calm, level-headed person who advocates acceptance, openness and freedom and lives it. WURST is the neoneo-humanistic figure, climbs the sculpture podium and enters into dialogue with Michelangelo’s David, as a marble icon of humanism and human freedom. The blue skin and the textile applications as an abstract, painterly pole cover the living body; an oscillation between art and life, material and transcendent comes into effect. WURST is the soaring blue being draped by flowing threads of color, and also the mask-like hybrid creature between the worlds. No polarizing black and white, but open, free, large blue