PAUSE By Adam Winder

'Pause' applies found images taken from the screen, collected, and collated to repurpose and examine perceived masculinity and the queer gaze in cinema, with an original essay by William J. Simmons.

This compilation explores how masculinity is portrayed in film visually. Displaying the often-overlooked tenderness of men and the seemingly erotic moments where men could be seen as the object. These frames, often originally concealed beneath alternative context to give a motivation and render this gaze more palatable to a traditional audience. The conscious view that the male body can be seen as an erotic object has been ignored. 

It aims to question the feminisation of men, the applying of well-established constructs of the gaze placed on women and the use of a woman’s POV to validate the looking of men by men. Presenting numerous layers of the gaze, from character by way of director and eventually the viewer.

The notion of individual predisposition regardless of its original intention plays a large role in how it is perceived. These images are solely interpreted by the viewer's own inclination, which becomes more exposing than any flesh bared on screen.

This collection acts as an insight into desire, the complexity of repressed longing and the identification that cinema allows with the safety of an unreturned voyeuristic gaze.

‘Pause’ addresses the queering of the gaze, to decentre the binary notions of storytelling and to challenge how we recognise intimacy and attraction that the male gaze has defined.

Softcover

210 x 148 mm

234 pp

First Edition of 200

ISBN 978-1-5272-9114-0