The Myth of Men

A man likes to drink a beer – or two. A cold nearly kills him. A man never goes to the doctor, rarely cries and never really understands his partner. What is real about the myth surrounding man? This is the question that Ahmet Polat explores in his The Myth of Men photographic series.

While gender studies tend to focus primarily on femininity and the role of women in society, Polat places the focus on man. He explores his mimicry and his gestures, he makes him physically and emotionally believable. A father swimming with his small son, a man at the barber’s, or a Dervish dancer with his billowing, white tunic: Polat’s photographs present men in situations that are far from any kind of cliché-like perspectives. Loving, sentimental and sensual, rather than muscle man and Porsche driver – this also is man.

Polat took photographs in Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands. He was at circumcisions and at wrestling matches, he sat in coffee shops and visited industrial complexes. His pictures bring together tradition and modernity, black and white, and colour.

Taken with a Leica lens, the individual pictures are often joined together to create a film series covering the entirety of the cosmos surrounding man. Whether an exhausted worker, a tender father or a son and fighter, the role of man today is multi-faceted. He is a money-earner, a man on parental leave, a husband and a lover all in one. Or to put it differently: the macho man seems to have disappeared a long time ago.

September 8 to December 2, 2017
Leica Galerie Istanbul