Ben Sklar: Tender Brother Limbo

Benjamin Sklar’s Tender Brother Limbo unfolds as a meditation on masculinity as a
fragile ceremony of becoming, explored through the experience of bachelor culture. Across
these images, manhood is rendered through gestures, codes, and initiations that bind
individuals to collective ideals of strength, loyalty, and belonging. Each passage marks a
transition from boyhood into the constructed fraternity of manhood. During the rite-of-passages
depicted in the handmade book we go along with the man’s journey to experience feelings of
intimacy, sensuality and an examination of the male bond.

Yet, Tender Brother Limbo lingers in the spaces where these rituals soften. Sklar’s work
is less concerned with the spectacle of masculinity than with its more subtle undercurrents—the
moments of vulnerability and tenderness that emerge within and between these inherited
performances. Here, softness is exalted: transformative, raw, and profoundly human. The
14-years of photographic works and essays are a mirror to reflect on the dynamics of male
teachings, relationships and growth often asking more questions than defining definitive
platitudes. What do those traditional male narratives mean? What does it mean to be a good
man today?

First edition of 300. 61 photographs and 7 essays.
128 pages, smyth-sewn and swiss-abound.
Hardcover with printed paper wrap and silver foil stamp.
Risograph printed and assembled by hand. (9 by 7 inches).