Photographer Josh Aronson captured a series of staged photos on the back roads of Florida (previously reported here). Between 2020 and 2025, Aronson worked with a group of young men to construct scenes of male tenderness, vulnerability, and outdoor play. For a generation who grew up on screens, this work creates a counter-narrative to the current epidemic of isolation and toxic masculinity that is impacting their lives. Set in forests, springs and swamps, the play follows a group of young people from the city who, like the place where he grew up, have no access to these open spaces:
“Florida Boy draws on the language of still paintings, southern photographic archives, and coming-of-age films to ask what tenderness means in a world that mistakes hardness for strength. Presented in the form of outdoor installations in the gallery garden, intimate large-scale paint prints, and assemblage installations, the series searches for softness in a culture that too often equates masculinity with dominance, for ephemeral and fragile spaces where another kind of childhood might exist.”
Josh Aronson’s “Florida Boys” opens November 22 at Baker-Hall in Miami.
