Nightswimming

From the publisher: "Stephen Barker has taken a camera into spaces whose existence hinges on their being unrecorded and anonymous. His photographs were taken in New York City's sex clubs. Caught in only available light, Barker's subjects swim in a murky world of isolation and sexual couplings, emerging out of a granular darkness to watch, to partake, to wait. The interactions are often ambiguous-layers of yearning veiled under the chivalrous codes of promiscuity. The indistinct figures merge and melt into the industrial architecture of darkened cinemas and hallways reserved for anonymous sex, but there are flashes of clarity even here-tenderness or indifference, passion or release."