Photographer Jose Arroyo Adds a Gender-Bending Twist to the Iconic Tom of Finland Aesthetic.

Oct 13

Los Angeles-based photographer Jose Arroyo’s mission is to empower anyone who views his work, including himself. “I grew up with an extremely poor self-image, so my first motivation was to focus on people that didn’t think of themselves as attractive or photogenic and capture the beauty in them. As I developed my identity as a gay man, I continue to use my images as a safe canvas in which to explore those feelings I’m still too afraid to express publicly,” said Arroyo in an interview with Out.

In his latest series, the artist reimagines an aesthetic that is well-known in the gay community: the hyper-masculine and hyper-sexual artwork of Touko Valio Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland. For his own take on the work, Arroyo adds a gender-bending twist to his photographs, which also experiment with capturing water through LED lights. “I was inspired to do an homage to the work of Tom of Finland, a master at showcasing hypermasculinity in his drawings, but with a gender-bender twist,” says Arroyo. “For the final touch, the images were edited in gritty black-and-white to emulate the feel/look of a drawing.”