Over the past nine months(as of Nov. 2025), I’ve been periodically traveling to Castine, Maine, to photograph the men who attend Maine Maritime Academy. The school is over eighty percent male, and almost all of them are white. The academy’s regimental program focuses on discipline, control, and hierarchy. At the same time, many of these students are living away from home for the first time, trying to figure out who they are. Within that mix, vulnerability becomes something that seems to be hidden. My photographs look for small cracks in that structure, moments where softness slips through the performance of toughness, while also revealing how these systems continue to uphold and reproduce patriarchal power. Through this project, I look at a community built around phallocentric ideals and the ways it shapes how men understand themselves during such a defining period of life. Birthed from this is the project Take you home Shoulder-high(2025-)