A satirical litany of masculine desire that moves from meme to history, landing somewhere surprisingly tender.
Men Only Want One Thing
Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting : To run away from home at seventeen and offer their services as a deckhand on a ship bound for the New World. To take a drag of a hand-rolled cigarette as they look out over their cattle herd, cowboy hat tipped to shade from the rising sun, tin cup of gritty black coffee in their hand. To build a Roman Castrum while on campaign in Gaul. To feel the sea spray against their beard as they prepare for raiding. To step foot on another celestial body.
Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting : To lead a cavalry charge into enemy ranks. To feed their bloodlust with the boiling anger inside of them. To stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their brothers in a shield wall. To defend the ramparts against the storming enemy. To use the violence inherent to them. To find themselves standing victorious on a battlefield scattered with bodies. To make a heroic last stand. To bleed out contentedly in a liminal place, knowing that they’ve successfully protected their family.
Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting : To be left alone. To fish in silence for a couple of hours, nothing but the sound of water lapping to keep them company. To reflect on their mistakes, and to forgive themselves. To remember their father and knowingly nod as they finally understand him. To devote themselves in their entirety to a project, and to finish that project with a feeling of deserved pride. To leave something behind.
Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting : To feel the contrast of their rough skin against their baby’s soft hand as it grips their finger. To face the terrifying responsibility of fatherhood and accept it. To smell their child’s hair as they sleep soundly in their arms. To blow raspberries on giggly tummies. To teach their son a skill and see him beam with pride as he does it by himself for the first time. To hear their child say “I love you” unprompted.
Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting : To wake up intertwined with a lover on a lazy Sunday morning, sun shining through the curtains. To bring her coffee in bed. To randomly run into the girl they met at a party a couple years earlier and have the courage to ask for her number this time. To fall deeply in love with their childhood next-door neighbor, decide to marry her at five years old, and stick to that plan for the rest of their life. To be unconditionally loved.
Yin and yang
In a collaboration, Susanne Helmert and Juliette Mansour both from the Substack newsletter took turns photographing objects that represented the philosophy of yin, and the other responded with one representing yang.
Holding the Opposite.
What the philosophy of Yin and Yang teaches us is that although they are opposing forces, they exist in relationship to one another. Balance is not created through sameness, but through interaction and transformation.
No matter what they photographed, there was never only Yin or only Yang to be found. And that’s what they ultimately found most interesting : keeping this philosophy in mind while photographing, or while looking at Juliette’s “replies,” made them sit longer with the images, thinking about them in terms of Yin and Yang.
“Yin-Yang is the idea that there is a duality to everything. But rather than this being some kind of oppositional or destructive conflict between two rivals, the Yin-Yang argues that there is a great harmony to be found in the contrast between things. The symbol does not feature a fully black side set against a fully white side. The white has a bit of black, and the black a bit of white. Contrast, yet harmony.”
Although we present the work as diptychs, we invite you to look at the images with this philosophy in mind. You may notice, as we did, that some of them can’t be assigned to one side as easily as others.
