One Too Many Men
This series addresses the persistent crisis of male suicide. Through staged self-performative imagery and symbolic visual environments, the work reflects on the emotional isolation and psychological pressures that can accompany socially prescribed models of masculinity.
The images explore the dissonance between cultural expectations of strength and stoicism and the more fragile realities of lived experience. By situating the male figure within psychologically ambiguous spaces, the photographs evoke the quiet tension between appearance and inner reality.
Rather than presenting a documentary account, the series uses metaphor and visual symbolism to reflect on the silent weight carried by many men and the cultural narratives that shape how vulnerability is expressed—or concealed.
The Fallen
The (Over)Thinker
The Romantic
The Distant
The Indifferent
References
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Seppuku — a ritualised act historically associated with honour, atonement, and the avoidance of shame.
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The Thinker by Auguste Rodin — often read as a symbol of contemplation, introspection, and the weight of thought.
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The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis — a work that has come to embody the idea of artistic sensitivity, struggle, and the romanticisation of early death.
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Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith — a reflection on how distress can be overlooked or misunderstood, mistaken for ease or play.
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Existential nihilism — a philosophical position associated with the absence of inherent meaning, often linked to detachment or indifference.
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A short AI avatar video “Jack of Hearts” created for your viewing pleasure.
Why the Jack, and not the King?
The King would be too powerful. Much of my work is concerned with restricted agency — the gap between the roles culture assigns us and the more complicated, more fragile realities of who we actually are. The Jack has voice and presence. He is not invisible, not merely a number in the pack. But he operates within structures that define and constrain him, and is fully aware of this.
Hearts seemed the only possible suit. This work — however difficult its subject matter, however uncomfortable its images — is driven by love of life and by a genuine belief that things can be better. That men can be better understood, by others and by themselves. That the conversation about what masculinity costs — the one that isn't happening loudly enough — is worth having.
And the Jack is a face card. He shows one face to the world while carrying others. Like the doubled and multiplied selves that appear throughout my work — the same man, repeated, inverted, at odds with himself — the Jack acknowledges the complexity of human nature. The folly and the failures alongside the generosity and the humility. The performance and the person behind it.
The interview you are about to watch is conducted with and by that Jack. The interviewer and the subject are the same man. Whether either of them is wholly representing truth is, as always, a matter for the viewer to decide.
This is a first iteration. The conversation continues.