A series exploring the pleasure and shame of looking by lens-based artist Jacob Faulkner. Born in San Diego, California, Faulkner received his BA in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles. Working primarily in photography, video, performance, and installation, he is interested in structures of masculinity, belonging, desire, and restraint. In “Rowers” Faulkner turns his attention to his collegiate rowing team to explore his own relationship to the act of looking. Using cropping as a tool to control the viewer’s gaze, Faulkner decontextualizes sites of spectacle and prioritizes peripheral moments, creating images that deliberately exclude the athlete’s goal and, consequently, the action normally used to justify our impulse to look. What we are left with is simply the desire without the alibi of investment in the sport:

“I play in the tension between controlled bravado performed for the camera and unguarded moments when teammates are unaware of my gaze. Tender images of my teammates become surrogates for my own longing for intimacy. Portraits of rowers drenched in sweat, sprawled on the ground, and gasping for breath explore the erotic masochism of self-induced pain endemic to male sports culture; this excess of exhaustion becomes a metaphor for the exhaustion of hegemonic masculinity.”

Jacob Faulkner participated in our 2026 Book Award open call and made our shortlist.