Hank Willis Thomas at Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Barbican Art Gallery

Hank Willis Thomas’s (b. 1976, USA) complex series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968–2008 mines the ubiquitous language of advertising to deconstruct the commercial representation of the African American male experience by repurposing magazine adverts made between 1968 – a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights – and 2008, which witnessed the accession of Barack Obama to the US presidency. By digitally stripping the advertisements – which were largely designed by white men for African American consumers – of all texts and slogans, Thomas exposes how cultural tropes are embedded in and therefore perpetuated through the imagery that circulates in magazines and other media, reinforcing stereotypes of African American men as gangsters, criminals, athletes or hypersexual beings. Ultimately, Thomas sheds light on how corporate America continues to reproduce problematic notions of race, sexuality, class and gender through the white male gaze.

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.