I want to take a closer look at your male nudes.  I find it very interesting that you are trying to reveal both the male and female aspects of the male human body.  I think gender is a lot more fluid than most people are comfortable with.  Most cultures want to have very rigid, exclusive categories for what is considered male and female.  Anything that transgresses those tightly constrained categories is usually a cause for discomfort, censure, rejection, etc.    Perhaps this is why your work has had an enthusiastic response in the gay community.  This is already a group that has situated itself outside many of society's gender classifications.  They are more open to what you are exploring.

I would have thought that women would be open to this type of imagery, too.  But many of them seem extremely uncomfortable with photographs of nude men: and god forbid that there should be a penis anywhere in a photograph.  My background in art history has desensitized me to a certain extent to the nude male figure.  After you have looked at hundreds of Archaic Greek sculptures of kouri, a penis really is just a penis.

I have been interested in the subject of the nude male in photography for a number of years now.  It started a few years ago when I was doing research for a novel, which I never ended up writing.  But one of the characters was a female photographer who was doing a project that involved nude male models.  I did a bit of research at the time and was intrigued by what I found.  So many different way of seeing the male nude--male, female, straight, gay, feminist, formal, anecdotal, and on and on.  Now that I have discovered that this is one of your main subjects of your photography, I definitely am anxious to delve more deeply into your oeuvre.

To loveleslie, I was not that familiar with the artwork that resulted from the Nazi era, but more attuned to the architecture (I'm an architect by trade). I did a search and found some sculptures made then, and I guess there could be a resemblance scale-wise, if my images were twice the size. But I feel my images have a 'soft-ness' or a gentleness in it's appearance, allowing both masculine and feminine energies to reveal itself. My editing and selection of photos is based on images that contained both these sensibilities. They are neither 'gay' nor 'straight', although the majority of my audience has been 'gays'. As for the scale, I felt that they were large, but not overwhelmingly so. They were comfortable in the narrow corridors of Shanghai Studio. Here in Hong Kong, large advertisements span the walls and surfaces of buildings and trains. In a way, the city has somewhat desensitized me. Just today, I saw these huge adverts of Korean pop star RAIN plastered in the subways of Causeway Bay. It's almost intrusive how we are abducted by advertising here in Hong Kong.

siiigh.....if only I coulda been there. I love living on a sunny island, don't get me wrong- But I see that I really miss out on a lot of other cool stuff, Shanghai I miss you!

Leslie it was also a kind of body cult...

I'm curious about what your reaction was to seeing your pictures on such a large scale?  Did it change your perception of them?  Did they seem different?  I was thinking about the issue of scale this morning in connection with the gargantuan "heroic" nude sculpture of the Nazi era.  Those are probably among the most oppressive human nudes ever created.  I guess that was their purpose in furthering the Nazi agenda of intimidation and world superiority.

great pics!  thanks for sharing^^

I just took a look at the photos you present us here from your book and I really like their intensity and aesthetics though they are more direct than european photography I've seen so far.
I have to admit that my pics still miss this intensity, they are rather melancholic...

nice pics of u !!!
how are u doing ?
When will u come to beijing man ???

ADI

Thanks for the comments. My photograph is sort of underground and niche anyway, so it works well. The gallery is so hidden, yet loud. I remember when I first arrived the gallery, it was rather a shock, although appealing. My friend who took me to the place was amused I think.

I think, the place was a good choice for an exhibition like this.It created a special and rather private atmosphere. I wih I could have seen it...