This week is #DefineBeauty week on Nowness, a special week of programming exploring the politics and provocations of attraction. As a part of the programme, Dazed Beauty and Nowness are teaming as much as release some latest editorial collaborations, like artist Frederik Heyman’s Define Beauty: Virtual Embalming and director Rhea Dillon’s Define Beauty: Process. Also this week, we’re celebrating the proven fact that Matt Lambert’s Define Beauty film His Sweat hit 15 million views on the Nowness YouTube.

Matt Lambert’s style is unmistakable; soft flesh, soft light, soft focus. His subject material is usually the human body, pictured at times with almost uncomfortable intimacy. By reshifting the male gaze onto men, in each his film and photo work, he asks us to rethink our assumptions about who’s the viewer – an inherently queer proposition. 

Over his ten-year profession, Lambert has shot editorials for GQ, Dazed and Vogue, carved out a distinct segment making music videos for primarily LGBT musicians, including Patrick Wolk, Mykki Blanco and Years & Years, and worked with brands corresponding to Rick Owens, Charles Jeffrey and YSL. His Nowness film His Sweat, an attractive NSFW ode to perspiration, just hit 15 million views on YouTube, and he’s pretty surprised about it.  

Watch the film below, and skim our interview with Matt about beauty, sweat and success.

What is the first memory you will have of finding someone beautiful? 
It was probably in summer camp in LA within the 90s. There was a counsellor who rode a motorbike and looked like River Phoenix.

When you made the choice to grow to be a filmmaker, how did you discover your style and subject material?
I began with superb art and that result in animation. Filmmaking was the following step. My subject material was a way for me to explore and understand things about myself that I desired to deconstruct — things that terrified me, turned me on, confused me, etc. Now it more often becomes a option to create a dialogue inside my community.

Your work refocusses the gaze from women to men, which is so refreshing… do you’re thinking that of your work as political?
I work with women an increasing number of. I made my first homoerotic all female film earlier this 12 months called ‘RELEASE ME’. I’m a really politically-minded person and I do see my work as being political since it’s an unapologetic and celebratory representation of people who find themselves often politically marginalised. Censorship can be a loud subtext in plenty of my work.

Tell me in regards to the idea for His Sweat. 
Raven Smith was commissioning this series on the time and was really enthusiastic about seeing what I’d do with the theme. For me, it was vital to make something that was erotic, but humanising at the identical time. It’s so often that queer sexuality is reduced to some extent of removing the non-public stories that lead people toward certain tastes. Fetish becomes fashion or Tumblr-consciousness, leaving people unaware of the basis of desire. 

The ambition to make something beautiful that bordered on the grotesque, something that was each educational and intimate and overall allowed people to potentially see SWEAT in a way they hadn’t before. 

What are you working on in the mean time? 
Quite quite a bit, however the highlights are being in development on my first feature film, working with Mykki Blanco on his latest album campaign and producing an album with a young latest artist in Berlin (more soon on that…)

What’s going to you be doing and where will you be in 20 years time? 
No idea. Hopefully still making things that matter to people and work that permits people to navigate their lives with more love and openness. 

How does it feel to get 15 million views? 
I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I never assumed there was such an audience for the esoteric homoerotic art video…