What does masculinity look like in contemporary China? ‘He’ is a follow-up to last year’s She Dreams, a series of portraits by Yan Wang Preston, made with the city’s growing Mandarin-speaking student population.
When she asked young men ‘what makes you a man?’, many of them felt that they were not as ‘manly’ as society would perhaps like them to be. In contrast to previous generations though, this was not something they found problematic.
He charts the new ways that we are identifying and understanding our gender today. Speaking about the project, Yan Wang Preston said “The process of photographing them became a process of inspecting and overcoming of my own prejudices. As a result, this set of photographs do not portray my sitters. Instead, they are a reflection of my understanding towards them and their fluid masculinity.”
The exhibition takes place in the streets around The Tapestry. Look out for prints on Constance Street and Kempston Street.
This exhibition is part of LOOK Photo Biennial 2019, a season of new photography from UK and China taking place across Liverpool, Wirral and Shanghai. Delivered by Open Eye Gallery.