Bloom and Bare by Eyal Briller

Issue 184

My midlife transformation hit slowly and quietly: ambitions shifted, family and work roles narrowed my world, and my body began to assert its age. There was grief in this, but also a strange, unwanted liberation - if the expected scripts no longer fit, who am I underneath them? Bloom & Bare is my attempt to answer that question using the tools I trust most: my body, the landscape, and the camera. In Hebrew, lehitpashet means both to get naked and to simplify, and that double meaning became a compass.

Inspired by ancient rites of retreating into nature at times of change, I started walking alone into forests, beaches, and creeks, making nude self‑portraits with a tripod and remote. The camera became my permission slip and portal. These images are not about posing or seduction. They are records of a man in midlife stripping away clothing, roles, and posture to meet himself as simply a man in the world - vulnerable, aging, still very much alive. The work moves between “a man in nature” and this specific middle‑aged Israeli‑American body, in this particular moment of his life.

Centered in culture and art history, men have long been idealized for strength and valor, But today, as a middle‑aged white man, I have been missing a more honest, nuanced representation of men like me; a “regular” male body, with its softness and marks of time, simply trying to be present. Even looking at my own body felt daring. There is a strong taboo around self‑gaze for men of my age - the fear of seeming narcissistic or perverse. Part of this project is an attempt to reclaim looking at oneself as natural and necessary rather than shameful, and to invite others to step outside the noise of modern life and consider what a more honest way of being in one’s own skin might feel like.

Eyal Briller (he/him) lives and works in Menlo Park, California, USA.
www.eyalbriller.com | @eyalbrillerphoto