Courses

Adam Meaney

BA [Hons] Photography

Adam Meaney is an Irish Photographer based in Dublin. Adam found his own personal style whilst shooting portrait photography and mainly focuses on themes such as identity, LGBT+ topics and relationships throughout his work. His work is driven by a desire to raise awareness of the issues that affect the queer community. When creating new work, he hopes to let the audience in through his eye of photography and have their own understanding of what is occurring throughout the imagery. In addition to his own projects, Adam often works collaboratively with people from varying disciplines to create work that explores different themes and topics that occur in everyday life.

I Always Had a Feeling

“I Always Had a Feeling” contemplates the relationship between a Mother and a Son as they navigate his coming to terms with his sexuality.

Struggling to understand his identity, the son enters a self-imposed isolation in the hopes of finding a way to discover who he wants to be.

His mother concerned with overstepping, wishes that they could talk. The images in this series offer glimpses of the slow unfolding of understandings that are at the core of this work.

A mother always knows what is going on behind closed doors.

Understanding the Behaviours of Toxic Masculinity and how it affects the internal thoughts of the Queer Community with the medium of Photography

In this thesis I will be discussing Internalised Homophobia and Toxic Masculinity and how both society and culture impacts the LGBT+ Community but more specifically, Queer Men. I will be using photography as my main resource of information and research. I will be exploring different photographers and their work throughout the themes of Internalised Homophobia, Toxic Masculinity and overall, the Queer Community. With the images that I have chosen, I will unpack them in various perspectives and analyse them using semiotic analysis and Barthes’ Denotation and Connotation levels of photographs. I will dive deeper into the photographs and their stories and discuss how they’re intertwined not only visually and theoretically, but in society and day to day life. My main aim of this thesis is to understand and break down the stigma of Queer men over the years and the overall theory behind toxic masculinity and why do such behaviours exist. I want to explore the idea around toxic masculinity and why it is a thing, the effects of internalised homophobia and what it has stigmatised on the queer person and the community they’re apart of, outside of the LGBT+ community. I will be discussing the stigma of queer men and the violence that has occurred towards someone for being their selves because of their sexual orientation. All the said above topics will be discussed through the eye of photography and how it’s both benefited and impacted the LGBT+ community.