Lens-based artist Jacob Faulkner has captured the contemporary art world’s attention with his striking photographic series, Rowers. A shortlist participant in the prestigious 2026 Booooooom Art Photo Book Award, Faulkner investigates the complex interplay between the pleasure and shame of looking—a concept deeply rooted in scopophilia and voyeurism. Born in San Diego, California, and holding a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Faulkner works fluidly across photography, video, performance, and installation.
In Rowers, Faulkner turns his lens inward, focusing on his collegiate rowing team to interrogate his personal and cultural relationship with the male form. Rather than documenting athletic triumph, Faulkner deploys calculated cropping as a critical apparatus to manipulate and control the viewer’s gaze. By deliberately cutting away the athletic goalposts—the finish lines, the boats, and the competitive stakes—he decontextualizes the spectacle of collegiate sports.
What remains are peripheral, often intimate moments stripped of the conventional "alibi" used to justify the male gaze: athletic investment. Without the excuse of tracking a score or measuring competitive success, the viewer is confronted purely by desire, vulnerability, and the intricate social architectures of homosocial environments.
Chronology: From the Waters of UCLA to the 2026 Award Shortlist
Early Foundations: Jacob Faulkner’s artistic trajectory took shape during his undergraduate studies at UCLA, where he earned his BA in Art. Immersed in Southern California’s contemporary art scene, he began developing a multidisciplinary practice exploring identity, spatial awareness, and corporeal politics.
The Development of Rowers: Drawing directly from his lived experiences within collegiate athletics, Faulkner spent extensive time embedded with his university rowing team. Operating both as an insider and an observer, he documented the grueling physical routines and quiet interludes of his teammates, laying the groundwork for what would become his signature exploration of masculine performance.
Refining the Visual Language: Over successive years, Faulkner honed his methodology, integrating performance theory and photographic restraint. He deliberately shifted away from action-oriented sports photography, choosing instead to focus on the liminal spaces between training sessions—the locker rooms, the moments of exhaustion, and the unguarded pauses.
March 2026: Faulkner’s distinct body of work garnered wider critical acclaim when he submitted to the 2026 Booooooom Art Photo Book Award open call, successfully securing a coveted spot on the shortlist and bringing his ongoing exploration of desire and masculinity to an international platform.
Supporting Data and Artistic Methodology
To fully understand the weight of Faulkner’s Rowers, one must examine the specific visual and conceptual mechanisms he employs. Photography has long served as a medium of surveillance and desire; however, mainstream sports photography typically sanitizes the male body through the lens of utilitarian achievement. Athletes are framed as machines of output, their sweat and physical strain justified entirely by victory or defeat.
Faulkner disrupts this transactional visual economy through three primary mechanisms:
Strategic Cropping: By eliminating the horizon, the water, and the boats, Faulkner isolates limbs, torsos, and facial expressions. This framing forces the audience to confront the body not as an instrument of labor, but as a site of aesthetic and emotional weight.
The Tension of Performance: Faulkner highlights the dichotomy between "controlled bravado"—the hyper-masculine posture assumed when athletes are conscious of the camera—and completely unguarded moments of fatigue.
The Erotic Masochism of Sport: The physical toll of competitive rowing—characterized by self-induced pain, oxygen deprivation, and muscular exhaustion—is reframed by the artist as a form of eroticized endurance.
Statistical and cultural analyses of male collegiate athletics consistently point to high levels of emotional repression masked by physical camaraderie. Faulkner’s work captures this paradox, transforming data on sports culture into visceral visual poetry.
Official Statements and Artist Reflections
In his artist statement accompanying the series, Faulkner provides profound insight into the psychological underpinnings of his work:
"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."
Through these reflections, Faulkner positions himself not merely as an impartial documentary photographer, but as an active participant navigating the emotional minefield of modern male identity. His admission that these portraits serve as "surrogates for my own longing for intimacy" elevates the series from a detached sociological study into a deeply vulnerable, autobiographical confession.
Implications: Redefining Masculinity and the Ethics of the Gaze
The cultural implications of Rowers extend far beyond the walls of contemporary galleries. By subverting the traditional visual tropes of athletic prowess, Faulkner contributes to an evolving discourse on the fragility and exhaustion of hegemonic masculinity.
For generations, visual media has reinforced a rigid archetype of the male athlete: stoic, invulnerable, and hyper-heteronormative. Faulkner’s imagery shatters this archetype by introducing elements typically suppressed in homosocial environments—tenderness, exhaustion, physical vulnerability, and unashamed homoerotic desire. By laying bare the physical toll of sports as a metaphor for the psychological burden placed on men to perform traditional roles, the artist invites viewers to reconsider how society constructs gendered spaces.
Furthermore, Rowers challenges viewers to confront their own ethical relationship with the act of looking. In an era dominated by hyper-surveillance, digital image consumption, and curated self-presentation, Faulkner reminds us that looking is never neutral. It is laden with desire, power dynamics, and historical baggage. By stripping away the "alibi" of the sport, Faulkner holds up a mirror to the audience, forcing us to ask: Why are we looking, and what are we hoping to find?
As Jacob Faulkner continues to build upon his recognition from the 2026 Booooooom Art Photo Book Award, Rowers stands out as a landmark achievement in contemporary lens-based art—a timely, courageous, and beautifully executed meditation on intimacy, performance, and the politics of the gaze.
