Backwoods Boys: The Monstrous Masculine is Carter Smith’s first solo exhibition in San Francisco, presenting new photographs of rural American men that unsettle familiar images of toughness and isolation. The show centers on intimacy, vulnerability, and selfhood, asking viewers to question what they think they know about the “backwoods boy.”
From the moment visitors encounter portraits like Raury, 2026 or Eric, 2026, it is clear this is not a parade of clichés. Dirt under fingernails, weathered clothing, and bruised skin are present, yet they function less as props of hardship and more as evidence of lives fully lived. Smith works between portraiture, cinematic storytelling, fashion photography, and the artistic nude, allowing each image to feel both immediate and strangely timeless. Viewers might think of stills from an unknown film, paused at a moment when a character lets their guard slip.
The title’s phrase, “monstrous masculine,” plays with unease. It evokes how rural men have often been turned into monsters in the cultural imagination—violent, bigoted, unreachable. Rather than confirming that fear, Smith builds a quiet counter-archive of tenderness. In one photograph, a subject’s back is turned, shirt lifted just enough to reveal skin and muscle, the pose hovering between self-protection and invitation. That ambiguity becomes the exhibition’s true subject.
For generations, American photography has leaned on recognizable rural archetypes—farmers, hunters, drifters, outlaws. These figures have often been framed as symbols: salt-of-the-earth heroes, looming threats, or comic rubes. In each case, their inner lives are flattened so the stereotype can stay intact. Backwoods Boys carefully pulls those images apart.
Smith approaches his subjects as collaborators rather than stand-ins for a fantasy of “country masculinity.” Weathered jeans, tattoos, and work boots still appear, but they no longer tell the whole story. Instead, we notice the way a hand rests on a thigh, the slight tension at the corner of a mouth, the way a gaze meets the camera—steady, wary, or unexpectedly soft. These details shift our attention from costume to consciousness.
This move away from caricature echoes broader trends in contemporary art. Photographers like Dean Majd, whose series "Hard Feelings" chronicles an insular circle of young men in New York, and José Villalobos, who queers the figure of the Western cowboy, also complicate how masculinity is staged and read. Smith adds a specifically rural chapter to that conversation. By photographing men whose bodies bear marks of work, desire, and time, he invites viewers—especially those who may have grown up far from these landscapes—to recognize complexity where culture has taught them to see only a punchline or a threat.
Although unmistakably contemporary, Backwoods Boys is deeply rooted in a long history of representing the male figure in art. From classical sculpture to twentieth-century physique photography, the male body has served as a site for debates about beauty, labor, nationalism, and sexuality. The Bob Mizer Museum, anchored by Bob Mizer’s vast archive, sits at the center of that history.
Mizer’s own photographs of bodybuilders and models pushed against censorship while encoding queer desire in carefully staged images. His work appeared in magazines that, for many readers, were among the few available windows onto gay life. Smith’s photographs arrive in a different moment, one in which queer visibility is more common yet still contested—especially in rural contexts often stereotyped as inhospitable to queer and trans people.
By presenting rural men who are neither sanitized pinups nor winkingly subversive caricatures, Smith extends the legacy of artists who have used the camera to question who gets to be seen as desirable, complex, or fully human. His images sit comfortably alongside other contemporary explorations of masculinity, from Noel W. Anderson’s textile works on Black masculinity to artists who engage sports, fashion, and nightlife. Yet the specific focus on "backwoods" men reminds us that queer visual history is not confined to cities and coasts. The landscapes of Smith’s photographs—wooded clearings, worn interiors, anonymous backroads—underscore how questions of gender and sexuality are always entangled with place.
One of the most striking qualities of Backwoods Boys is its embrace of ambiguity. Many images hover between documentary and fantasy, between fashion editorial and private snapshot. Viewers are asked to sit with uncertainty: Are we witnessing a confession, a performance, or something in between?
This ambiguity becomes a tool for exploring vulnerability. A subject’s direct, unwavering gaze may seem confrontational at first, yet the longer we look, the more we notice signs of openness—a relaxed jaw, a slouch that suggests exhaustion rather than defiance. In another image, a man turns away, lifting his shirt; the gesture could be read as bravado, but it might also signal trust, the willingness to be seen without the armor of denim and flannel.
Desire is present but never reduced to spectacle. Unlike commercial images that treat the male body as a product to be consumed, Smith’s photographs register desire as a shared, unstable space between artist, subject, and viewer. This is where the “monstrous” returns in a different key: not as a label for the men depicted, but as a reminder of how easily our fears and fantasies can distort what we see. By slowing down our looking, the exhibition asks us to recognize when we are projecting monstrosity onto others—and what it might mean to stop.
The Bob Mizer Museum and Photographic Archives is dedicated to preserving and presenting one of the most significant collections of physique photography and related visual culture in the world. Its mission extends beyond safeguarding images; it also examines the cultural conditions under which those images were produced and how they continue to shape queer visual history today.
Backwoods Boys: The Monstrous Masculine fits squarely within this mission. By placing Smith’s work in dialogue with Mizer’s archive and other holdings—from European publishing houses to independent studios—the exhibition expands the visual vocabulary available for thinking about masculinity. It demonstrates that the male figure in photography is not a static symbol but a living language, constantly revised by artists who push against censorship, homophobia, and narrow ideas of gender.
For visitors, this means the show can function as both a stand-alone experience and an entry point into the museum’s broader collections. Someone drawn in by the cinematic atmosphere of Smith’s photographs might find themselves tracing lines back to mid-century magazines, censorship battles, or parallel explorations of rural and working-class masculinities. In this way, the exhibition moves beyond representation into education, helping audiences understand how images of men have been used to police, punish, or liberate different bodies across time.
Backwoods Boys: The Monstrous Masculine is on view at the Bob Mizer Museum and Photographic Archives in San Francisco from September 3 through November 28, 2026, with an opening reception on September 3 from 6:00–8:30 p.m. The museum is located at 920 Larkin Street, placing this conversation about rural life and masculinity squarely within the fabric of an urban neighborhood.
To make the most of a visit, it can be helpful to carry a few questions from image to image. How is this person holding their body, and what does that posture suggest about comfort or unease? What traces of work, weather, or intimacy are visible on their skin and clothing? Where do you sense the presence of the photographer—in the angle, the distance, the quality of light? Instead of asking, “What type of man is this?” try asking, “What story is this person allowed to tell here that might be hard to tell elsewhere?”
For those who cannot attend in person, following the Bob Mizer Museum online at bobmizer.org is one way to stay engaged with this and future exhibitions. Whether encountered on the wall or on a screen, Smith’s images remind us that masculinity is not a fixed script but an evolving conversation. By looking more slowly and more generously, viewers participate in that conversation—and help imagine a world in which no one is reduced to a stereotype.