Alan Charlesworth

Boatslip Pool – Bear Week (Provincetown, MA), 2010

Cheech and Scott – Haircut (Gibson, PA)

Dick’s Bed (Burlington, VT), 2010

Harry at Creek Bed

John and Mike – Watching TV (Rensselaer, NY), 2014

Mike's Leg

Pride Flags – Hillside Campgrounds (Gibson, PA)

Randy and Gates – in Kitchen with Drinks (Orlando, FL), 2010

Rich – Sleeping in Tent (Mansfield Center, CT), 2011

Rusty – Lone Star Saloon Mascot (San Francisco, CA), 2012

Tom’s Back (Dallas, TX), 2011

Steven with CPAP in RV

Bryan and Jim's Basement

Bio: Alan Charlesworth was born in 1981 outside of Philadelphia, PA. He currently holds an Associate degree in Graphic Design from Champlain College, a Bachelors degree in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and a Masters degree in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). During his stay at RIT, Alan began photographing his friends in the hirsute homosexual subculture known as Bears and later continued this work through graduate school at RISD. In 2010 he won a Photography Fellowship through the New York Foundation for the Arts with his project “Brotherhood of Bears.” Alan’s photographic work has been exhibited internationally and has been showcased in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and FeatureShoot. Alan is currently an Adjunct Professor of Photography and Graphic Design in Upstate New York. He continues to explore various facets of the gay community, subcultures, and sexuality.

Images in this collection were included in the two-person exhibition Bear / Hunt at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s Weil Gallery (10/13/17-11/17/17)

Brotherhood of Bears

Statement: New York-based photographer Alan Charlesworth offers an intimate glimpse into the world of Bears, a subculture within the LGBT community composed of gay men who pride themselves on their robust stature and brawny masculinity.

As an adolescent in 1990s, Charlesworth found himself cast adrift a world that often equated homosexual maleness with cosmopolitan glamour and fastidious grooming. Unable to identify with these mainstream representations, he was first drawn to the Bear community through the photographs of Lynn Ludwig, an artist who journeyed across the states to shoot gatherings of hairy, larger gay men. Although he himself did not possess the physical attributes normally assigned to Bears, the artist felt a potent kinship with the community, and gradually he became a part of it, attending events and bars along the Northeastern coast that catered specifically to Bears.

After forging friendships within the Bear community, the photographer began to branch out from bars and public events and into the everyday lives of Bear couples. Entering the homes of his subjects, he reflects on quiet sunlit afternoons and moments of hushed contentment. As the project unfolded, Charlesworth explains, he began to occupy an ambiguous space between belonging and uncertainty, his camera serving both as his passage into the Bear community and as something that divided him from his fellows. Here, the tight-knit brotherhood is seen as if through a veil of homesickness, existing in a space that is both close at hand and just perceptibly far away.