NUDES documents the lives of queer men today through environmental portraiture. I began this project to address personal body issues through the study of the bodies of other men, and searching for a contemporary gay community I see myself being a part of that I do not see represented in the world at large.
The definition of ‘community’ in this project aims for comprehensive inclusion. As subjects I seek cis and transgender gay men 18 to 100 years of age depicting all body types, ethnicities, and sexual proclivities. The portraits are nude to present these men in a state of vulnerability with a strength expressed within that vulnerability. The work is to be viewed chronologically by age from youth to seniority and offers two approaches to its reading. First, every subject is taken at face value as the individual they are. Second the series as a whole is a metaphor for a fictional character representative of gay culture, the ‘idea’ of a man who lives his life and then dies at the end of the story.
This project aims to break down prevailing societal ideas that are perpetuated by mainstream media of what and who gay people are supposed to be, a representation that I have found that has almost nothing to do with real queer life. The work seeks to establish a visual language with which we can recognize each other, to dig beyond the surface and to treat each other with a little more depth and substance. When we can see each other I think we can begin to see ourselves.
