Bill Bamberger: Boys Will Be Men | The Ackland Museum of Art, Chapel Hill | Through April 12
What does it mean to “be a man”? For Durham photographer Bill Bamberger, this is a question that has consumed him since adolescence, when a fractured relationship with his father spurred him to better understand the complexities of masculinity.
Bill Bamberger: Boys Will Be Men, a new exhibit at the Ackland Museum of Art, is one way that Bamberger has explored the question. The project dates back to 1985, when Bamberger began working at Deerfield Academy, an all-male boarding school in Massachusetts, where he began documenting students in what would become an ongoing portrait photography series. In 2000, he picked the series back up at Flint Central High School in Michigan, continuing it again in 2023 at Durham School of the Arts (DSA).
This new installment features 42 individual portraits of DSA students. In some, subjects are contrasted against a jet-black backdrop; in others, students pose throughout campus—sitting on steps, lingering in hallways, and posing on athletic fields. A slideshow of the portraits loops throughout the gallery, playing anonymous audio messages from participating students.
All the portraits were taken by Bamberger’s steady hands, but he is quick to uplift his numerous collaborators. At the Ackland, Director Shalini Le Gall and Associate Curator Lauren Turner worked to commission the exhibit, he said. At DSA, art teacher Jack Watson served as Bamberger’s campus liaison. A crew of DSA students also assisted.
The exhibition took two years to complete. Students helped rehabilitate a dingy basement hallway into a studio and gallery space, where many of the portraits were taken before they made their voyage to the Ackland. Turner says that alongside learning craft techniques, students also gained a deeper appreciation for their peers.
“[Students] were able to unpack the artistry behind the portraiture and say, ‘How does what this person is presenting compare to what I know of them?’” Turner said during the exhibit’s media preview. “‘Does it seem authentic? Does it seem inauthentic? Do I just not know them very well?’ And when the teachers started describing this to me, I was like, ‘That’s wonderful, because this wasn’t just Bill photographing and interviewing students for two years. It was a two-year dialogue.’”
Finn, a former DSA student who is now at Durham Technical Community College, said that while they initially had low expectations for the experience, it quickly became how they spent much of their free time. Having their portrait displayed, Finn said, helped them process masculinity.
“Because I’m not a cis guy, it was really interesting to hear how [other students] talk about their own masculinity,” Finn said. “How some people seem really insecure or sad sometimes, and other people are really content and happy with who they are.”
To mark the exhibition’s opening, the INDY spoke with Bamberger about how the series got started and what the students have taught him along the way. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
INDY: What steered you toward this project?
BAMBERGER: When I was a senior in college, my parents’ marriage was coming apart. My dad left home and took the family resources. He had squandered them, and we were left without any money. We lost our home. We had to move around. He was struggling with alcoholism.
I was probably 20, 21, but I was still trying at that age—we still don’t know who we are—and I was trying to figure out the kind of man I wanted to be and what that meant. So that’s what inspired the project—my personal search to understand who I was and what maleness meant to me then and what I could imagine going forward.
You’ve done this project twice before. How did you come to these particular locations for it?
The first iteration was at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, a rural private school, all-boys. At the time, I wanted to explore maleness. And at that time, in photography, Sally Mann hadn’t even done her series, At Twelve. There were still things that were coming out about women, but there was not much looking at masculinity and maleness. In those days, no one even used the word toxic masculinity but I grew up and knew what it was because it was part of the world we all grew up in. There were bullies, there were those who had more power, and the boys dominated the conversation in every classroom. We’re never wrong.
I saw some of that at Deerfield, but I also saw students like Andrew or John Margaret, who were thoughtful and kind and decent and looked after others. So it was interesting. I spent two years there, living in a dorm one year, and then living off campus, and really being a part of the life of the community.
[The next project was in] Flint, Michigan, where I spent two years, 2000 into 2001. It was a big NEA initiative, one artist in every state in the country. We went to underserved communities, not Ann Arbor or places like that. We went to Flint, which was being forgotten at the time. I found this really cool public high school that was fascinating, because at one time, it was kind of the Mecca. There [originally were] so much, so many resources in Flint, Michigan, with manufacturing. But then, as that started to fail, they lost resources. Whites fled the school when integration happened—typical—and so this was a forgotten school, but it was great.
I don’t have favorites, but I will say, I love the kids there and my time there. It was just so amazing. Deerfield was a place I went to because I knew that world, that’s where I started. And also, I wanted to turn my lens on that world. It was very privileged, very white.
So much documentary work looks at people who are forgotten [and] gives them voice. I went there thinking it would be a more critical piece that I would do, in a way, because I knew that—but in the end, I found that a lot of the students had a real privilege but they were struggling with a lot of the same issues.
Their future, their identity, their families were not as solid as you might think from the outside. There was alcoholism, there was pressure to be something, and it was really a learning experience for me. And in my work, if I am anything, I think I am fair to everyone. That’s important. We all have our biases. We bring them to every story we do, and yet, sometimes we have to push past them or let go of them.
Your first project in Deerfield was in 1985. How was an exhibition on masculinity received back then?
In those days, we didn’t even talk about masculinity. Lauren Turner, the curator, asked a former [Deerfield] student, “How did you feel about Bill Bamberger doing his project?” He said, “What project?” I just went there to photograph boys becoming men and didn’t even know I was doing a project.
I think the best images are complicated. You can look at these images and try to imagine who they are, and maybe not really get there. They’re just like a moment in time. Richard Avedon—I love his work, [he’s] a great fashion photographer who’s done some really powerful documentary work, particularly his project in the American West. He says all images are accurate, but none of them are truth. I think that’s interesting. It’s like every one of these in that moment in time is a reflection of how they show themselves, but it doesn’t get to the greater truth of who they really are. It’s less about artistry and fanciness, but more about connecting with human beings.
Who are some of your other inspirations?
Let me talk about August Sander, a German photographer who set out to do a portrait of all of Germany, the people. The Third Reich was gaining power, in the beginning of the oppression and killing of many people. His work was later destroyed. His son was killed in a concentration camp. His images were very controversial, because he didn’t just show the Aryan race, the Germans’ view of what they wanted this country to be. He showed homeless people, he showed artists, he showed homosexuals—that was the word used at the time. He showed people of different races, and that was what was controversial. They did literally destroy a lot of his negatives, though many were smuggled out, and he became acclaimed. His portraits are very direct; I’d say less emotional than mine, evocative, but in some way more archetypal.
Given how times have changed since your first run of Boys Will Be Men and the spectrum of masculinity is more accepted in some ways, what was the initial pitch like with the subjects at DSA, and how was it received?
Things have changed so much. When I went to Deerfield, the hard part was just getting permission. They wouldn’t have me there unless I would teach. There was an art position that opened. So I went half-time as a teacher and half-time to photograph. I also coached. I helped with lacrosse, a little wrestling, which is my sport, and I helped with the JV football team. I think, because I had been in that world, they felt safe with me.
When I went to Flint, it was a full proposal based on what I had done at Deerfield. It was the largest grant in the history of the National Endowment for the Arts. It was Hillary Clinton’s initiative—called “America Creates for the Millennium” in the year 2000, and they reached out to one artist to place in every state and the six territories to do a project about being connected to the community.
When I went there, I did what I always love to do, which is look around. I had corresponded with Dick Ramsdell, who is still the social studies teacher there—I spoke with him last week—he was all in. And then I went to the school to make a trip before I started. And this is after I’d been selected by the Flint Institute of Arts. So I gathered with a group of [Ramsdell’s] students, about 15 or 20, and I told them what I wanted to do. I told them about the book I had done called Closing, about the life and death of an American factory. That’s why Flint picked me, because GM [General Motors] said, “This guy’s going to come in and do something about factories closing.”
The first person to speak up was Robert Wishart. I’ll never forget this. Raises his hand. He says, “Are you going to come in here and do to us what everybody else does? As soon as there’s a story about people getting laid off, they come into Flint. They tell the story of our parents getting fired, of the shocks, the same clichés. We don’t want that, not again. So if that’s your case, go away.” And I thought it was such a great question.
The reason I was so drawn to [DSA] is because it is so diverse. Racially, economically, the educational background of the students, their gender. Some of them are students of old-school Durham parents who teach at Duke. Others are first-generation families to come here. We thought it would push the conversation about masculinity and maleness to a new place.
At Flint, we didn’t even use the word “masculinity” so much. We talked about what it is to be a man. The whole title “Boys Will Be Men,” it was my play on when I was coming up, and even up into the years of Flint, when boys would act in a way, when their behavior was out of line, they would say “boys will be boys” as if to suggest it’s OK. And sometimes that was bullying or breaking things or doing really mean things. So the point of the title is, no, they will be men. They will grow up. They will carry forward the good and bad of who they are. A lot of the students have never heard of that phrase, “boys will be boys.” It’s gone from the vernacular.
The first conversation I had was with a couple of faculty members, Holly Loranger, and my host, Jack Watson. They sat down to ask what we were about and what we were doing. And one of the first questions is how we would handle students who presented as female but who identified as male. And the answer was easy to me; we will include them, of course. I mean, I’m not going to ask them to provide documentation as to how they identify. I’m going to include them. That’s part of why we’re here, is to understand the full range of what masculinity is in this community.
You mentioned “boys will be boys” is not really in current vernacular, but the sentiment is still very much in the zeitgeist and has reared back with Joe Rogan and the idea of the Manosphere. Do you feel like there is a timeliness to this exhibit?
There’s no intention to push back. The one thing I push back on, which might be unexpected, is that I think there needs to be a healthier, safe place for young men, or young male-identifying students, to feel really good about being male. It’s easy to talk about all the things that are wrong. It’s easy to talk about toxic masculinity. In fact, a lot of these students are educated in that, and it sort of starts to sound the same. That was something I thought about with the interviews. We know what it is. We know it exists. But I think it’s harder to get at what is essentially unique and special.
It’s hard when young people are coming of age. Part of being a progressive, for me, is also accepting others and bringing people in. And so, if people push back because we have students who present as female who identify as males, what’s the harm [in inclusivity]? Who are we to say who someone else is? It’s about inclusion on all levels. And that’s what this community, and I think that’s what I love about DSA, is that it is so inclusive.
You’re saying it’s not a political statement.
I think there’s politics, that’s why I cited August Sander. He wasn’t making a political statement. He was just showing his country as it existed. And I feel like I’m showing maleness in this time and place in America. And I know this school is more artsy, as it exists, and there’s going to be some people who look at that and are moved by it and say, “This is the inclusive world.” And there are others that are going to look at the show and be outraged, and I hope that neither voice speaks too loudly. I hope that most of them come to this exhibition with an open mind and open heart and say, “Wow, I’m learning something.” I’ve learned something being here about the world and about a different kind of diverse, inclusive space.
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