Exposure: Rory Hamovit

Gem Fletcher profiles LA-based photographer Rory Hamovit, who uses photography as a stage to play with manhood and queerness, and speak to the complexity and fragility of masculinity

Making poetry out of the collisions between masculinity and queerness is an integral part of Rory Hamovit’s work. The Los Angeles-based photographer is interested in the theatre of gender. The photographic frame becomes a stage to play with and critique the effects of toxic masculinity. “The work is my form of protest,” Hamovit explains. “A space to interrogate the cognitive dissonance and show how masculinity has never worked out for me.”

The photographs speak to the complexity of manhood and the inherent ­fragility of masculinity while making visible the incoherent and insatiable mechanisms of the patriarchy deeply entrenched in our culture.

Top: It Had To Be You, 2020; Above: Smoke, 2020. All images: Rory Hamovit