Hold Me Tight

• Prize
  Gold in Portraiture/Family
• Photographer
  Allison Plass, United States
• Date of Photograph
  2020
• Website
  http://allisonplass.com
• Instagram
  @aplass

In my series Hold Me Tight, I explore moments of vulnerability and intimacy between my husband and two teenage sons. The sculptural quality of their forms reminds me of early ideas of classical beauty and their physical interactions, distilled in a photograph, reveal heightened tensions of closeness that are familiar scenes throughout the history of Western art. Inspired by art history, psychology, and Greek myth, I explore the question of whether there exists an inherently masculine experience and reflect on the biases of our own cultural moment of narrowly defined readings of boys and men.