PROJECT COUTUREBOY

Project COUTUREBOY began as an art project born from Gene Tolan's desire to decode the powerful intersections of photography, desire, and advertising. Each photo shoot in the project serves as a kind of mediation and exploration of the forces at play in shaping our individual and collective aspirational identities. With funding from a Facebook (now Meta) small business grant awarded during the 2020 pandemic, Tolan embarked on a journey to reveal how deeply the language of advertising influences our aspirations and self-perceptions.

In every shoot, Tolan transforms the studio into a reflective space where images do not just capture a subject but explore the nuanced power dynamics behind branding ideologies. Each photograph becomes a study of how we align with or resist commercial narratives that define beauty, masculinity, and selfhood. In this way, COUTUREBOY is more than a series of images—it's an ongoing visual discourse on identity, prompting those interested in this tribe's aesthetic form and physicality to see themselves anew in the mirror of culture, commerce, and desire.