Alisha Chauhan

 Photographer Anthony Manieri plans a spontaneous shoot with dancer and actor, Gerrard Woodward in London, England. Woodward is doing jumps in the air when 

Manieri feels a spark of inspiration as he recalls a 90’s Versace ad photographed by Richard Avedon. Manieri asked him to do it again, but this time nude. 

Woodward felt vulnerable and nervous at first, as his body is not what many would consider a paragon of male beauty. But after some coaxing, he leapt across the stage. In the resulting image, shot in black and white, his agile body spreads out as if he is about to take flight. At this moment, he is beautiful, he feels free. 

This one photo changed everything for the man behind the camera and many others across the globe. Woodward posted the photo on his social media and it went viral. 

Manieri got a text from his sister-in-law who lives in Italy and she sent him a picture of the viral photo but they were colourized stickers that were all over the subway in Naples. This photo has been taken from the internet and reproduced without permission many times. Another incident in China, where the photo somehow became an inspirational meme with mandarin text under the photo. 

“I had clients in Beijing and they were like ‘Oh my god, you’re the body positivity guy?” Manieri says. He couldn’t figure out what the mandarin text meant and had no idea what they were talking about. They explained the meme would be sent if someone was starting a new job or got a promotion and translated to something like ‘if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything.’ 

Manieri knew things had started to shift when he was tagged in an Instagram post surpassing 150,000 views discussing The Arrested movement in Russia. 

Manieri initially planned to start a small project, photographing a handful of men of all walks of life from Toronto and displaying the work at a local art gallery. However, the first photo going viral expanded the direction of his project exponentially. Instead, he created a massive project where he photographed hundreds of men across the world and created a portrait book that is set to be released sometime next year. 

The distorted beauty ideals that are represented in mainstream media and in
popular culture have been challenged now more than ever before, especially in the past decade. However, most discussions surround body positivity for women. There have been many strides towards body positivity for women but there is this
recurrent notion that if men bring up the burden they face, they’re undermining
what women go through.

It’s a difficult situation because women have always been objectified but in the
process of boosting awareness for self love for women, the same space disappears
for men. This is why Manieri started The Arrested Movement. He believes this isn’t a gendered issue, but a human issue and wants to challenge it through showcasing all body types.

Manieri started working on the project in 2016, after a difficult period in his life. His sister is blind, his elderly father had to be moved to nursing homes, while his mother almost dealt with several near-fatal health scares. 

“During that same time, my partner and I broke up, and my relationship with my business partner started to sour because of my absence from work, having to care for my family,” he says. “After my father passed, and the sale of my shares of my business, I had an emotional breakdown. I put on a lot of weight and became depressed. My self-esteem suffered greatly.” 

Manieri immersed himself into mindful meditation, which helped him on his journey to self-love and acceptance. Spirituality became a major focus in Manieri’s life as he studied many practices such as reiki energy healing and kabbalah, an esoteric method and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. His teachers taught him that the universe and your higher self will talk to you if you listen and catch it. 

Manieri felt his higher self call to him and is what truly reassured him that he is going to do a global portrait series. “I remember sitting on the plane and I’m literally getting downloads where I’m hearing I guess my higher self saying ‘this is what you have to do,” he says. “I’d hear a download saying, you have to do video and it sounds so stupid but I was just like okay!” 

Once he got off the plane, Manieri made a few calls to people in England, the states, and parts of Canada asking them to fly down to Toronto and everything just worked out perfectly from there on out. 

Manieri does everything to create a safe and comforting space for these men. The studio is private — no one but Anthony and his participant are on set. Before they step inside the studio, they’re welcomed by the greeter at the entrance.

Manieri guides his subjects until they find their rhythm and truly let go. “Through the course of the shoot I’ll explain to them watch your fingers, watch your toes. Like, I’m not looking at your bits, I’m looking at how you place your fingers when you’re jumping in the air. I’m looking at the lines of the body,” says Manieri. 

In the midst of the shoot, Manieri will bring them to the camera and show them the images. “Sometimes they just get so lost in it that I’m not even there anymore,” he says. “A few times I’ve caught myself crying because it was so beautiful,” 

Vincent Santiago, a PhD student at X university in the clinical psychology program with clinical research in disordered eating finds that men are overlooked when it comes to diagnosing eating disorders. Disordered eating behaviors are often driven by ideal body standards set in mainstream media and the entertainment industry 

Santiago says that the psychological assessment tools designed to detect eating disorders are mostly designed for female samples. As a result, so many men go undiagnosed because their symptoms present differently than in women. 

Gavin Queen is a body positivity advocate and participant in the BBC TV series The Naked Truth. He and Manieri have been friends for a long time, and is now planning to shoot for The Arrested Movement in the near future. 

“As a bigger man I thought it was so important what he was doing,” Queen says. “So many men struggle, as being bigger is just not considered desirable at all. Anthony is helping to change that and it’s truly commendable.” 

Queen was featured on the episode titled “Male Body Image” that has reached over 6.1 million viewers on Youtube. In the episode, he talks about how little discussion there is of men’s mental health and the unhealthy coping mechanism he would use when it came to his body image. Queen would often make fun of himself in front of others before they could do it to him and even though he would go along with it, it hurt his self esteem. 

A participant at The Arrested Movement’s second Toronto shoot was diagnosed with cancer. The disease and treatment dramatically changed his body. He told Manieri that he came today because wanted to be remembered. “I gave him a hug, excused myself and went outside and just started balling my eyes out.” 

“When someone tells you something like this, you can’t ignore that and it’s not just an art project anymore.” Manieri has big plans for 2022 as he has been asked to be a part of a massive group show in London, England that will eventually tour internationally with the theme of men from the renaissance to modern day. 

Posing nude is a vulnerable experience for the participants who struggle with body-image issues but through the course of the shoot, the participants conquer their fears and get one step closer to truly accepting themselves. 

“People are coming in and they’re literally shaking and it’s been said to me a few times that once they leave they just shed whatever anxiety they may have had when they first came in,” says Manieri.