Annika Weertz is a 25 year old media student and self taught photographer from Germany, currently based in Gießen. Her art is a mix of analogue and digital.
“My work focuses on what I know and care about. I always identified as a confident and independent girl, or now young woman, and I’ve always had a handful of best girlfriends. Still, boys never seemed like mystery to me. I’ve always had more male friends than female ones. I was mostly the only girl in a group full of guys and therefore I am interested in focusing my lens on them. Within the years, I have had different types of boyfriends, kept in touch with my guy friends, talked to them about their relationships or other romantic issues. I have never felt excluded from their world.
With a lot of feminist art, especially photography, emerging from all over the globe that celebrates different body types, sexual freedom and independency of women, I was wondering how the boys and young men were doing. What stereotypes do they have to live up to? We are all aware of certain features that are linked to the definition of masculinity. A man should be strong and tough. Men should hardly cry and do not get overly emotional because society could think that these traits make a man soft or even ‚gay‘ — the ultimate anti-man.
I want to capture their vulnerability, their fragility, their soft side. Because we are all people with similar feelings. And while women are feeling pressured into looking a certain way, I think that man are experiencing this pressure, too — but they do not speak up for themselves yet.
I currently get the impression that girls are only talking about girls and what it feels like to be a girl in today’s society and that the boys should just listen. While this is a good start, we need to start talking to each other and not stay in our own worlds.“
https://annikaweertz.com/
