TIM CHRISTOKAT

This portrait series is a part of a broader study of cultural mythologies based on my personal experience growing up in South Africa. Some of what I was taught about masculinity in my formative years, I learned in the classrooms, hallways and sports fields of British all-boys schools. Places that can be drearily conformist in their understanding of gender. Early on, I learnt that the male gaze is hardest when directed at one self. Part of my developing behaviour during that time was often narrowed into a constraining box of stereotypical male acceptance. In those years, being decidedly non-conformist in an effort to break archetypes, I turned to skateboarding and Punk Rock. Yet subscribing to an alternative subculture, meant once again adhering to strict codes of dress, language and behaviour. So much so, that as a teenager and later as a young adult, I was often policing my thoughts and behaviour - looking for clues of dissidence. 

Perhaps now free of parochial prejudice and with a better understanding of myself, I have the urge to explore and question the representation of gender and the mythologies, contradictions and complexities surrounding it.