Hola Mi Amol

As long as I can remember, there has been a running joke in my family : one should never date a Dominican. Coming from a French-Dominican family which has witnessed many failures with mixed relationships, Dominican men became a persona non-grata when discussing personal relationships. Therefore, I never really engaged with any Dominican men, but also my engagements were limited as I was always treated as an outsider, as a tourist on the island. It led me to develop an interest in a particular yet taboo type of relationships : tourist women and local men. Family prohibitions and prejudices only pushed me to gain my own insight into the Dominican culture, and as a part of this photographic series, I went on to pursue an immersive investigation as a tourist that travels in search for love. During my stay there, I was trying to develop a relationship, any relationship with the men I met ; so I could document it, and understand better who they were, and what they were expecting from me. I also wanted to know how these tourist women might feel when they paired with Dominicans and what they were offered. But most of all, it was important that you see my desire -faked or not- and that you realize it is not such a common thing, women looking at men. Women desiring men, openly. Through a combination of text (see descriptions) and images (mobile-phone images, analog portraits and sunglasses-spy-camera photos), I take you with me along my story, narrative being central in my work. This series is the first step into my broader investigation on the notion of virility and the status of female-gaze in contemporary societies.