Dean Majd’s Photography Expands the Emotional Register of Masculinity

For much of photography’s history, male portraiture preserved a degree of emotional distance, presenting men as stoic, authoritative and restrained. Dean Majd has spent the better part of a decade pursuing a more nuanced portrayal of masculinity in photographs that capture men in moments of profound vulnerability and mutual dependence, chronicling friendship and conflict with great candor and empathy. His subjects are his peers and friends, and his images carry the immediacy of lived experience, unfolding in bedrooms, bathrooms, skateparks and other spaces where genuine moments of revelry and collapse unfold.

Born in Queens to Palestinian immigrant parents, Majd is self-taught, and his practice has been deeply shaped by the city that continues to anchor his work. His photographs have appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Magazine, GQ Middle East, Aperture and Dazed, and he has exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of the City of New York. Editorial commissions—from photographing Zohran Mamdani for Vogue to Kareem Rahma for the New Yorker—signal a growing recognition of his distinct visual sensibility.

Most recently, his debut solo exhibition, “Hard Feelings,” opened at BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of New York—a stunning series of portraits of intimacy, grief, tenderness and pain among young men. Majd’s use of light and shadow recalls the dramatic chiaroscuro of Baroque painting, isolating gestures and faces with theatrical precision while also heightening the humanity of his subjects.

Prompted in part by the sudden death of a childhood friend, the series traces the lives of a tight-knit group of young men as they navigate the full emotional continuum of human existence. Majd allows affection, confusion and fragility to occupy the frame without restraint, expanding the emotional register available to male portraiture, particularly for men of color whose interior lives have historically been flattened or erased. If the exhibition’s photographs feel unusually intimate, it is because they are not constructed from observation alone but from proximity, trust and shared history. In this conversation, Majd reflects on the emotional stakes of that closeness and the visual language he built to contain it.

Your work resists the flattening gaze often directed at men, and men of color in particular. What visual or ethical principles guide your representation of these subjects? 

I began making this work with the goal of creating a record of truth, images that would only exist for my friends and me. I had not seen anyone who looked like us in popular media, or even social media, really. I felt like we were outcasts in a way. We built our own world, this special world that no one else had access to. We were everything, so I felt the need to document it in the most authentic manner. Just for us and nobody else. I respect my subjects, and the images were borne out of love. The only way they can be made is if there is trust between us.

I never went in with ideas of what images should be made. I just photographed what I saw and who I spent all my time with. Everything needed to be candid or impromptu. I wanted to photograph the good, the bad, the happiness, the pain and everything in between. I rarely held back, even in the hardest times. And I did the same with myself, too. I documented myself in my hardest times, putting myself on the line as well. It was my life and my story to tell. And the images I did not take are the ones I remember the most; they genuinely haunt me. It’s better to take the photo and discuss if it should go out in the world than to never make it at all.

I never want to present people as perfect. These principles, over time, created a natural, authentic range of the masculine experience, especially that of men of color.

Has your own identity informed your image-making? Or do you prefer to approach your practice more broadly? 

I allow my feelings and my interests to lead my image-making. My work is oftentimes driven directly by what is occurring in my life at the moment. I’m concerned with understanding people, specifically those who have been subjected to violence, state-sponsored or otherwise, because my community and I have been subjected to so much of it.

Being Palestinian, I experienced grief at a very young age and learned that empathy and grief go hand-in-hand. That grief helped me develop an infinite well of empathy, and that empathy has become the foundation of my practice. I resist the notion that I have to make work about my identity because I’m Palestinian-American and Muslim, but being Palestinian is the reason why I can make the work I make, regardless of the subject matter.

What inspired “Hard Feelings”? 

I didn’t actively pursue this body of work at its inception. Even the title of the series was named on a whim very early on, and somehow has manifested so much truth in our experiences. There was no real inspiration for the project itself, other than my friends and the people around me. In many ways, it feels like it was given to me. My mother gave me a camera when I was seven, and I still haven’t stopped taking photos. I grew up without parental supervision, so I ended up in the graffiti and skate scene in Queens in middle school and high school, and stepped away from the world to pursue a degree in International Relations. I never believed I could succeed as a photographer, so I began taking it seriously for myself as a teenager, and in 2015, I began seriously attempting to make art out of making images in my life.

In 2016, I reconnected with a childhood friend, James, at our local skatepark in Astoria. I took his portrait, and a week later, he tragically passed away in a subway accident. Through his passing, I became close to his predominantly male friend group who were part of Queens, New York’s graffiti and skate scene. We became close through the grief, and I instantly was thrust back into the world I grew up in. They were the first people to encourage me to take photos and pursue photography, and by the end of the year, they gave me full access to their lives.

In my pursuit of a record of truth for my friends and myself, I would take thousands of photos and reflect on them afterward. I realized I was documenting brotherhood, masculinity, male-female relationships, but really, violence, substance misuse, loneliness and self-destruction, including my own. I created a space of vulnerability for men who are often told they need to be invulnerable to survive, a space for my friends and me to face our own shadows. When the work became more public and attracted more attention from strangers, I realized it had the same effect on viewers. It became a mirror for all of our experiences.

There’s a striking use of light and shadow throughout the series. Can you speak to that—do you feel that builds intimacy from the point of view of the viewer? 

The aesthetic nature of the work is defined by the subject matter, specifically the lifestyle of my friends and me. The world of graffiti (and skating) largely takes place at night, and can be very violent, toxic and fueled by drugs and alcohol. I’ve always loved the tableaus of Baroque painters, specifically Caravaggio, and filmmakers who work in a kinetic, raw style like Andrea Arnold and John Cassavetes, as well as surrealists and extremists like David Lynch, Gaspar Noé and Lars von Trier. In many ways that seeped into the images themselves, but really, it was serendipitous. My interests and the lives we were living blended perfectly.

At night, my friends are more free and open with themselves. It was almost as if our emotions and actions reached their highest and lowest points when the sun went down. It was most certainly magnified by our collective grief and the substances we were consuming. I was very non-technical at the time; I only really knew how to make images with point-and-shoot cameras.

I had to learn to take photos with very little light, and only used the on-camera flash in small, specific instances. Because of my constant image-making, the nature of candid, impromptu image-making and our trust, the boundaries between us and the camera melted away. My friends could be the most honest and vulnerable within the images. I find that vulnerability cuts through the viewers, allowing them to be vulnerable as well.

The work is an honest representation of my friends’ lives, but I needed the images to be truer than true. The visual language—the intense shadow and illuminating light—created a surreal nature to the images, which would form “representational truths.” The “representational truth” of the images speaks to something greater; allegories, mirrors, that can connect to viewers to grander subject matters around masculinity, violence and hopefully allow them to face their own shadows, face complicated repressed emotions that my friends were facing through the lens. I studied Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothic style and her use of allegory in relation to violence and faith. It deeply influenced how I sequenced and presented my images. At the same time, I really frame “Hard Feelings” around the idea of an odyssey: these masculine rites of passage. I wanted to elevate these unseen, unregarded lives to the place of mythology, biblical stories and high art. I wanted to create a legacy for those who are told their lives don’t matter. If the photos were made in a more hard photojournalism style, they’d be more difficult to connect to and overall less universal.

You’ve described your friends as both subjects and collaborators. How do you navigate trust and authorship when photographing people so close to you? 

I rarely call my friends subjects. It’s hard to even consider them that; I really see them as family. I often say that these images were given to me as gifts by the people in them. There is an awareness that I’m the recordkeeper, archiving and constructing the narrative of our lives. In a way, they co-author the images, but also release them to me to do what I want with them, to tell their story accurately and respectfully. It requires immense trust.

That trust exists because of my complete openness with the people who end up in front of the camera. After I make the images, I sit and show them the images, oftentimes in person. There would be many times when I would invite them over to my apartment, and I showed them the work like a slideshow. We have constant conversations about whether and when the images will be shared way before they’re put out into the world. My friends bare their souls to me; it’s the least I can do. Because of my openness, I’ve never been denied making images. Whenever someone is uncomfortable with me sharing an image, I respect that decision, and it’s always the right choice. There have been times in which people told me they weren’t comfortable being photographed anymore, and it made our friendship stronger.

Photography is inherently voyeuristic, but I attempt to have a practice that is anti-voyeurism. This is my story and my people. We have gone through so much together. There’s so much pain, so much happiness and everything in between. We share everything with each other. I’m also photographing myself at the best and worst moments of my life, putting it all on the line just like them. We’re very much in this together.

Have you dealt with similar issues when photographing subjects you’re less close to in other series? 

For years, I had crippling anxiety around photographing strangers, or even people whom I wouldn’t consider loved ones. When I began to make special editorial projects or be commissioned for editorial work, I forced myself to fight through that anxiety. I have learned to build trust with strangers pretty quickly, even if some people resist opening up. I used to think I could only make good images because I was photographing my friends, and because they’re so special. I realized, through my deeply empathetic nature, that I can connect with strangers on that level as well.

The downside is that I absorb people’s pain. It’s the alchemic exchange I have to make; I get to create these intimate images, but I hold onto their emotions for months, oftentimes years. I’ve learned that I need a lot of time to decompress; a lot of alone time of intense exercise, journaling and meditation, just to release the pain. Even with strangers, it all stays with me. The closer I am to the person, the longer the hurt lingers.

There are images in “Hard Feelings” taken before the pandemic—looking at those now, what feelings do they evoke?

Overall, those images feel way more free, way more uninhibited. Intense, but not burdensome. I yearn for that time when things were simpler. Less complicated and more authentic. I’ve inadvertently documented the change of the city and how men of color have been affected by it. In the spectrum of things, it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime. I was also much younger, still in my 20s. The images after the pandemic began are so much more serious and way more melancholy.

Finally, we have to ask. What was it like to photograph Mamdani?

An absolute pleasure. He’s a consummate gentleman and a real-deal New Yorker.

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