Open Theme nominee

In my series Hold Me Tight, I explore moments of vulnerability and intimacy between my husband and two teenage sons, often while on family vacations in nature. A kind of sensory aliveness takes hold and I see their changing bodies, in adolescence and midlife, register so much feeling. The sculptural quality of their forms reminds me of early ideas of classical beauty, and the stories and struggles of manhood in Ancient Greek myth. Their physical interactions too, distilled in a photograph, reveal heightened tensions of closeness that are familiar scenes throughout the history of Western art, yet speak to a resonance I might not otherwise see in daily life or in cultural representations of male relationships. Space for uncertainty, softness, and longing for connection unfolds, and an epic love story between fathers, sons, and brothers becomes new terrain to explore in a traditionally homophobic American landscape. Inspired by art history, psychology, and Greek myth, I explore the question of whether there exists an inherently masculine experience that deepens the mystery of what I observe, and reflect on the biases of our own cultural moment of narrow societal ideas of manhood. And standing just outside their intimate circle, I recognize myself in these moments, both the masculine and feminine within each of us, at times indistinguishable, by holding up these tensions in the light.

Allison Plass is a Fine Art photographer living in NYC. She received her MA in Art History at UC Santa Barbara with a focus on gender and representation in European Art, and completed the Advanced Track Program at the International Center of Photography. Her work draws inspiration from art historical representations of the past that continue to shape the collective imagination and the stories we carry about our own lives. She is a 2021 Critical Mass Finalist and her work has been shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition #163. She has received Honorable Mentions from the Center for Photographic Art for her work Heatstroke, and for her portrait series, Hold Me Tight from the 17th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Award For Women Photographers, 2022.