Traces

The photographs in Traces began as pictorials in gay men’s magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Men’s bodies exposed, on display, are then excised and replaced by hand with pieces of other images in the sequence. Tracing the edges of their bodies with a blade is both tender and violent, and the resulting images leave marks of absence that weigh heavy with loss. The work explores what it means to be seen, to be vulnerable, and speaks to access and interest in queer and trans bodies, gendered notions of desire, and the pieces of ourselves that we hide from view.