A new exhibit at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum is something of a homecoming for documentary photographer Bill Bamberger.
The UNC alumnus and Duke University professor spent the past two academic years photographing and working with more than 250 students at Durham School of the Arts for the newest iteration of his series "Boys Will Be Men." But, the story behind the project actually starts about 40 years ago.
In 1984, Bamberger was a teacher at an all-male private boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Grappling with his own experiences and questions about masculinity, Bamberger began to photograph students as they navigated the path from adolescence to manhood.
He returned to the project in 2000, now a documentary photographer working as an artist-in-residence at an inner-city school in Flint, Michigan. The stories were different and the times had changed, but the conversations Bamberger had with students had stayed the same.
"It was about our identity and where we would go in the future, our work, identity, our careers, the imagination of the kinds of men we wanted to be," he said.
In 2022, the Ackland commissioned Bamberger to return to the project for a third chapter, this time partnering with DSA.
Lauren Turner, associate curator for contemporary art and special projects, said the project aimed to be as community-driven as possible. That's why the exhibit first debuted at DSA, in an abandoned basement that Bamberger and students converted into an underground gallery.
"It is a hallway that he and the team transformed via drywall, paint, (and) track lighting, all with the administration's permission," Turner said. "That is being left as a legacy for the school that they're able to use simply for exhibiting other art. So it wasn't like we set up this beautiful thing to help this project, and then took it away. It gets to stay there."
Available at the Ackland until April 12, the exhibit features 42 portraits of students, as well as audio interviews from selected participants.
While previous iterations of "Boys Will Be Men" were photographed in black and white, this time Bamberger and the students chose to keep the images in color.
"Color is nuanced, it's contemporary, it's ever changing." Bamberger said. "That's the way we saw gender in this world, more subtle, more nuanced, more complicated, more contemporary."
Over the last four decades, Bamberger said dialogue around toxic masculinity, sexuality and gender have changed. When he started the project in Deerfield, only one student was out as gay. At DSA, students from all over the gender and sexuality spectrum were welcomed to be included in the project.
Aside from being photographed themselves, students like Vasileios Gkoulioumis-Mantzoukas were also involved behind the camera. Gkoulioumis-Mantzoukas said he had heard about the project, but he didn't get involved until he stumbled into it in the art classroom one day.
"I was like, whoa, this is not your average student project," Gkoulioumis-Mantzoukas said.
He became a part of the student team who helped Bamberger, a group that he described as very grassroots and diverse.
Now graduated from DSA, Gkoulioumis-Mantzoukas' own portrait is featured in the gallery. He hopes the exhibit will inspire people to talk about masculinity, but that's not all that he's taking away from the experience.
"Making new friends and getting to take part in this?" he said. "That's the greatest memory I could ever have."
Also new at Ackland
In the room beside Bamberger's exhibit, another new installation is now open to the public until May 17. Titled "Color Concentrated," the gallery features modern paintings and sculptures from the Robertson collection as well as a floor to ceiling collection of vibrant paintings intended to create a wall of color.
On the opposite side of the room, a magnetic reproduction of the gallery is available for visitors to make their own arrangements of the works of art.
"I think we have the freedom to really experiment with this and allow responses that are everything from allowing yourself to be immersed in a warm bath of color to a kind of critical attention to the ideology of display," said Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Peter Nisbet.
