What is it about the act of looking that gives it such intensity? For thousands of years, seeing a person sculpted, painted, drawn, or photographed has provided an open window into what it means to be human, and often, what it means to be that human. “The Boys Who Loved Flowers,” a portrait series by Los Angeles-based photographer Brandon Stanciell, is the most recent project to move us in this way. Through a stirring and intimate collection of photographs, Stanciell has us reconsidering what it means to gaze, and to know.

Stanciell says that his concept was to portray a more sensitive side of black men—“a side most people aren’t familiar with,” he writes. The subjects, each one a young black man, hold or wear a bundle of long-stemmed gerbera daisies against a white background void. In these nowhere spaces, black skin is on display, crisp in its silhouette against the white backdrop. The red, pink, and yellow flowers are so bright against the neutrals in each shot that they seem nearly collaged into place.

One figure, dressed entirely in white, seems to float in empty space. His gaze meets the viewer’s, inviting the opportunity to do something we can nearly never do in reality—stare back. It’s at once confrontational and soft, challenging and emotive. Certainly, this is what Stanciell was after: a gaze, reprojected, asserted, and reversed. A claiming and reclaiming of presence and identity.

View the rest of “The Boys Who Loved Flowers” here.
More of Brandon Stanciell’s photography is available on his website.

What is it about the act of looking that gives it such intensity? For thousands of years, seeing a person sculpted, painted, drawn, or photographed has provided an open window into what it means to be human, and often, what it means to be that human. “The Boys Who Loved Flowers,” a portrait series by Los Angeles-based photographer Brandon Stanciell, is the most recent project to move us in this way. Through a stirring and intimate collection of photographs, Stanciell has us reconsidering what it means to gaze, and to know.

Stanciell says that his concept was to portray a more sensitive side of black men—“a side most people aren’t familiar with,” he writes. The subjects, each one a young black man, hold or wear a bundle of long-stemmed gerbera daisies against a white background void. In these nowhere spaces, black skin is on display, crisp in its silhouette against the white backdrop. The red, pink, and yellow flowers are so bright against the neutrals in each shot that they seem nearly collaged into place.

One figure, dressed entirely in white, seems to float in empty space. His gaze meets the viewer’s, inviting the opportunity to do something we can nearly never do in reality—stare back. It’s at once confrontational and soft, challenging and emotive. Certainly, this is what Stanciell was after: a gaze, reprojected, asserted, and reversed. A claiming and reclaiming of presence and identity.

View the rest of “The Boys Who Loved Flowers” here.
More of Brandon Stanciell’s photography is available on his website.