Two men are sitting at a round wooden table, each holding a microphone. The man on the left is wearing a cap, black shirt, and pants, and appears to be speaking. The man on the right is wearing glasses, a white t-shirt, and black pants, and is looking down at some papers. The background has a large pink banner with floral designs, a QR code, and text.

Gene Tolan is a New York-based photographer, visual strategist, educator, and artistic researcher whose work centers on Black male beauty, masculinity, desire, and the cultural life of images. Through photography, fashion, curation, and publishing, he examines how beauty is constructed, perceived, circulated, and assigned cultural value.

He holds an MFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design. He is currently completing the One-Year Certificate Program in Curatorial Practices in Photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP).

Working across fine art and commercial photography, Tolan brings image-making into dialogue with research, material culture, fashion, and visual strategy. His practice considers the body as architecture and the image as a site where beauty, desire, identity, and recognition are composed through light, gesture, clothing, surface, and setting.

At the center of his work is an ongoing commitment to Black American male beauty as a subject worthy of sustained attention, sensuality, glamour, and visual pleasure. Rather than treating beauty as something that requires justification, Tolan approaches it as a cultural fact and a form of knowledge.

His projects include COUTUREBOY®, a multidisciplinary study of male beauty through photography, garments, and film; CoffyGalerie, a platform for exhibitions, curatorial projects, publishing, and visual culture; and COFFY, an expanding editorial project examining Black male beauty, glamour, masculinity, and representation.