“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”

This quote from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing captures the asymmetry of a visual order that has left deep traces, not only in the production of images, but also in how we speak about bodies, gender, and desire. While the male gaze on female beauty functions as a cultural constant, there is a lack of images and narratives in which the male body becomes the object of a female perspective.

The photo and video work Adonis explores this lack with a questioning and curious gaze. The portraits place men in the role of the observed, as projection surfaces for female desire, while also reflecting social constructs, ideals of beauty, and concepts of masculinity.

The photographic work is complemented by video interviews with people socialized as female, reflecting on their perspectives on bodies, masculinity, and their desires, thereby broadening the scope of the work.

Taken together, these approaches reveal that the female gaze resists clear definitions; it remains a process of seeking, ambiguous and contradictory. Simply reversing the male gaze would overlook its complexity and fail to capture the multi-layered character of female perspectives. The relationship between gaze and desire likewise resists simple binary logic and is bound up with concepts of gender that are currently pluralizing and being redefined. Engaging with the female gaze ultimately raises the question of how we want to see, desire, and become visible in the future.

2025