Ben Handzo

Artist Statement:

By photographing Boy Scouts, I’m exploring my own experience of uncoolness.  I was pretty uncool as a teenager, but Boy Scouting was my coolness nadir.  I knew how uncool it was even while staying involved long enough to become an Eagle Scout. My experience gives me a sense of reverence toward the boys, and I strive to be sympathetic to their awkwardness. I feel a sense of obligation to protect the boys from pictures that would open them up to mockery by their friends or anyone else. Reverence towards the boys and their experience leads me to make sentimental images.  My sentimental feelings towards the boys are warranted by the context in which I find them.  Knowing that they are Boy Scouts, with all of the associated bravado and ‘50’s era masculinity, allows me to contemplate their sweetness without fear of lapsing into kitsch.  My sentimentality is couched in a belief that the tenderness shown will not last long, possibly no longer than the moment it takes to record it.  Recording this tenderness demonstrates the capacity of men to both feel and evoke sentimental emotions.   I capture moments of stillness in which the boys are comfortable revealing themselves as soft within the hardness of Scouting and masculinity.  I hope that these pictures will expand the definition of masculinity and subsequently expand the ways that men are allowed to act.