Sigrid Jakob was born in Southern Germany but now lives and works in New York City. She received a BA from Oxford University and in 2003 an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. All of Jakob’s work in one way or another deals with the fragile state of masculinity today. She explores the ideals and fraught reality of how men see themselves by investigating different male groups and subcultures. Her work has been shown in various New York City group shows, at the Minnesota Center for Photography and CEPA Gallery in Buffalo and will be represented at this year’s Danish Photography Triennial.

This body of work has grown out of my interest in how men manage to create authentic identities in a world where masculine ideals are becoming ever more narrow and constrictive.  

The gay male subculture of bears - men who exalt in their large, hairy bodies - is an interesting mirror to our cultural obsessions. By blatantly defying the beauty ideals of both the straight and gay mainstream, bears have chosen to be outsiders twice over. Instead of hewing to pre-defined notions of masculinity, bears have blended a romanticized blue-collar aesthetic with a warm, inclusive way of interacting.  

With my images I want to reflect this complex identity, showing my subject’s delight in their bodies, but also the defiance or even melancholia that often accompany this hard-won confidence.

As a straight woman who enjoys looking at these bodies my role is an unusual one. We are rarely given permission to look at large bodies, and when we do we are trained to look at them critically. I want to unsettle our viewing habits and make us see them with a lover’s gaze, as deserving of our desire.    

Ultimately, my goal is to contribute and to expand the ongoing discourse on how men look at men, women look at men and how we look at ourselves - the complexity of what happens when one human being looks at another human being. 

I find my subjects on bear-specific internet message boards and web sites. I collaborates with them on how they want to be depicted, which means sometimes re-interpreting standard ‘beauty poses’, sometimes coming up with a new visual vocabulary. The resulting images are frequently used by my subjects in internet personals ads and home pages.