Out in the Household Series
In the history of images, queer culture and homosexual love have existed in the outside realms of discreet meeting places, dark urban surroundings, private clubs, and mythological fantasies. Only recently have couples moved indoors and become “domesticated” under the gaze of media and public culture. The current focus on gay people in politics, marketing, and television shows marks their inclusion into a new mainstream, encouraging consumerism and enticing dreams of marriage and home ownership. My interest lies in documenting this social development between gay lovers by responding to their natural physical engagement with each other at home. Are these relationships undergoing a process of cultural assimilation, or have they defined their own space outside of heterosexual templates?
I have photographed couples using intimate strategies of large format portraiture, distilling moments of tenderness and privacy enacted for a stranger. The images are both spontaneous and manufactured representations of domestic scenes. Poses are composed by observing each couple’s interactions. Shooting sessions are arranged like blind dates by finding couples through the Internet and local ads in magazines as I travel. In the photographer’s role, I am granted access to these varying lives in multiple cities. By focusing on same sex subjects, traditional roles in the household are reinvented and rediscovered. This ongoing series reveals interior surfaces as an expression of desires by those living within.
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