Reframing Masculinity and mythology of the american west

An article from NPR discusses the photographer Kristine Potter’s monograph Manifest. I found the title of this article super interesting and that is why I decided to give it a read. Continuing her previous explorations of masculinity, with Manifest, she rethinks the American symbol of the cowboy and the aura of his home on the range. The contemporary pioneers we meet in the photographs live off the land too, working in farming, mining and ranching. However, their masculinity doesn't just come from a stoic strength like the cowboy archetype. Potter set out to show that masculinity exists on a spectrum. She depicted these men, along with landscape with different views, angles, and perspectives. I thought this article was extremely interesting and made me think about how masculinity is depicted in the media. Usually Asian men are hypersexualized and their masculinity sometimes isn’t even depicted.