Catherine Opie's series, High School Football at Masculinities: Liberation through Photography

Athleticism is often perceived as a proxy for strength, which is itself equated to masculinity, thus constructing the deceptive notion that strength and social power rely on how masculine one is. In Catherine Opie’s (b. 1961, USA) series High School Football – comprised of formal portraits in which young players gaze directly at the lens – her subjects reveal a vulnerable youthfulness that stands in direct contrast to the stereotypes of masculine virility associated with American football culture and the perception of athletes as aggressive, hypercompetitive and emotionally disconnected. Photographed between 2007 and 2009 in locations across the US, from Hawaii and Alaska to Texas and the artist’s home town of Los Angeles, High School Football foregrounds the vulnerability of young male athletes in the precarious moment between youth and adulthood.

What does it mean to be a man today? The Barbican's Masculinities: Liberation through Photography considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day.