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I’ve always been fascinated with gay nightlife: bars, clubs, et cetera. I thought of these establishments not so much as necessary places of entertainment and safety for queer folk, but more so as facilitators of complex social and physical interactions that I had not yet discovered as an 18, 19, and 20 year old. I attribute these ideas to the limitations that my hometown suburban community instilled upon my personal discoveries of intimacy. Discoveries that many of my adolescent peers had already made when they left home.
This allure I had to nightlife pushed me to photograph its attendees, but it was certainly not without hesitance. Much like how I photographed the series of romantic couples the summer prior, I approached these club goers with a certain amount of envy. This time around it was for the access they had. This newfound security in my queer identity was conflicted by the law, forbidding me from reaching my full potential into adulthood as a gay man. All of these emotions directly affected the act of photographing itself. Often time I felt uncomfortable and overly self-conscious of my devices. I was then able to find stability in two extremes: close ups where a subject-photographer relationship was established, but conversely an anonymous Peeping Tom approach to the voyeuristic activities unfolding in front of me.
Whilst the subject of queer socialization is far from controversial in the contemporary, I wish for these images to be a record of my continuing navigation of an identity that I’m still quite new to.
