Bearded Brutes or Bearded Beauties?

Think beards, and you may automatically bring to mind a checked shirt bedecked chap with perfectly trimmed and oiled beard, perhaps pouring you a coffee from a suitably hipster conical flask.

Or if you’re me, you might recall a junior school teacher who smelt of pipe tobacco and had more hair upon his chin than his head.

Whatever springs to mind, Bearded Brutes, Mark Leeming’s exhibition at HOME, challenges that perception and our perception of beauty, masculinity and, of course, beards.

Bearded Brutes features an array of stunningly vivid portraits taking the beard to a whole new level. Bearded gents are transformed with clothing, make-up and, most importantly, glitter into gloriously exotic characters by Mark, who acted as photographer, make-up artist, director and stylist.

After much to-ing and fro-ing over diaries – unsurprisingly he’s a busy chap – we tracked Mark down to chat about the exhibition and the story behind it.

Why Bearded Brutes?

There was no initial thought process when it came to producing the Brutes.  It was something that had very small beginnings and kind of snowballed and grew organically really.  I wanted to get back into shooting some portraiture which is one of my favourite forms of photography but had been busy with other projects so it had become somewhat neglected.

The glitter beard craze had begun a kind or revival (notably created by the Cockettes in the 70’s) last year before Christmas.  Images of men adorned with glittered bodies and beards started filtering through the web.  This caught my eye and I thought lets do some glitter filled portraits!  I asked a few friends if they would pose for me, aiming to do around 3-4 to satisfy my hunger and curiosity.  I then got inundated with texts, emails, phone calls from other friends asking me to create a Brute out of them.  It now stands at a staggering 24 – something I never thought would happen.

The brutes is about being non-conformist to sexual representations that society feels the need to label us also. It’s about being label-free no matter what your gender or preference.  This is celebrated through the art blurring the boundaries of masculine vs femme.

How did you find the models? Were all of them volunteers, or did you have to twist an arm or two?

Around 90% of them were forthcoming to me.  I had to sweet talk one Brute for about a month!  He had never donned any make-up or glitter and felt a little out of his comfort zone.  I think one of the misconceptions with the Brutes is that they are all professional drags or performers.  They’re not.  And that is what I love about it.  They are predominantly just guys that want to be a part of something fabulous.  A piece of lasting art and I love their passion for this project.  They really did deliver every time.