To Be a Man: Visions of Self, Views from Within Book

To Be a Man offers a rare glimpse into the changing state of mind of contemporary American males through a collection of photographic and written self-portraits. Daniel S. Kaufman traveled across the country asking men from all walks of life what they think it means to be a man. Each of the seventy-six men in this book created a visual and written portrait of himself and his masculinity. The results are often funny, distinctively enlightening, and always compelling. Utilizing a thirty-foot-long remote shutter release, which is visible in all the images, each man set up the context and props of his own photograph. This method allowed the men to express themselves visually and to choose how they would most like the world to see them. Accompanying every photograph is the subject's handwritten statement about being a man, along with answers to a questionnaire providing a standard biographical sketch. The fusion of handwritten words with these unusual photographs provides illuminating self-portraits of more than seventy-five vastly different men, traditional and untraditional, ranging in age from eleven to ninety-two, and hailing from Alaska to Florida, from Maine to Los Angeles. To Be a Man is an important testimony of what is happening among men in this nation, documenting many of the difficulties men face in identifying themselves, and offering tremendous insights into how they have chosen to live and interact with others.