In reflection, I realise how my projects of the last two or three years had been driven primarily by a sense of anger, whether it could actually be gleaned from the pictures or not. After three exhibitions and an intense year marked by a perspective shift in my experience of intimacy, sexuality, and belonging, the anger about the cultural and spiritual dislocation inherent in consumer capitalism remains, but somewhat mitigated by a new sense of personal fulfilment, desire and longing.

As I have previously argued, photography has been unfairly burdened with being a historical record, a trace of reality, a window to a world already in the past, the melancholic testament to the inevitable passage of time. The moment the picture has been taken dies with the creation of its record. Various authors have described photography therefore as possessing this inherent melancholy of the irretrievable. It has always struck me as odd to reduce photography to this particular aspect, as no medium has been used to transport and stimulate desire to the extent that photography has. From pornography to advertisements, from holiday pictures proudly shown to the neighbours at home to the hopes invested in images of weddings and babies, photography can stimulate desire—the dreams and fantasies associated with the acquisition of certain items, skills or qualities, the envy and greed of seeing other people possessing what oneself is lacking, the vision of a happier future. Erotic desire as stimulated, yet incompletely fulfilled by pornography may be the most obvious way, in which photographic images project into the future. Any picture not primarily a personal memento may invite the viewer to imagine an alternative reality to his own, to allow his  imagination to wander and ask, “What if…?” Melancholic? Maybe insofar as a particular desire may be impossible to satisfy, but not immanently so. Desire, in any case, is striving towards a thing, a person, a time, not moving away from a moment, a person or circumstance vanishing into the mists of the past.

Advertisement uses this forward projecting motion of photography. Here the medium most closely approaches the purpose John Berger ascribed oil painting and its almost hyper realistic qualities. Modern advertising, in addition to presenting wares or services as attractive and desirable, loads the advertised thing with significance and meaning not inherent to it. The consumer’s desire is then not aimed at the product itself, but at what it signifies. While ice cream may certainly be a wonderful thing on a hot summer’s day and may be appreciated for its taste and refreshing qualities, Unilever loads its ads with sexual innuendo by showing luscious female lips seductively sucking on a Magnum bar.

I wonder whether it is this use of photography that renders the pictorial representation of desire such a minefield. As desire is also what motivates behaviour, photography representing and possibly arousing or stimulating desire risks acquiring a manipulative quality, as in advertising. As desire typically aims at an ideal, its depiction may also represent such an idealised state, situation or thing and appear escapist, kitschy, insincere, twee or — how petit bourgeois! – aspirational. From the thoroughly epilated bodies of adult women mimicking their prepubescent state to the fresh and tasty looking hamburgers of fast food chain adverts that have little in common with what is in the box, desire wants perfection. What’s a little lie, a little photoshop, a little gloss between friends?

When desire turns overtly erotic, the problem gets worse. “Dirty old men” photographing nubile young women posing (or posed?) nude for the purpose of what is euphemistically referred to as “fine art photography” — on the condition that the lighting be sublime – raises the question of the power differential between the sexes, between the photographed and the photographer, and finally between the producer and the viewer or consumer. Desire turning to exploitation?

“Man on man” photography, at least, should be largely unburdened by gender battles, yet its manipulative qualities are hard to overlook. Particular representations of masculinity abound, often exaggerated masculine stereotypes of rugged looks, muscular physique augmented by “fat, throbbing cocks” and “big, juicy balls”, often in stereotyped masculine roles and poses— the car mechanic, rugby player, cowboy, policeman, soldier etc. Or the pretty boy type – young, seductive, lithe, innocent, and ready for consumption. Representations of sexual desire and sexual encounters are rarely different — athletic, handsome, well endowed men presented in an idealised way and setting, posing in sex play designed to look attractive, sexy, wild, uninhibited, possibly hard and dangerous. A heavily idealised and carefully groomed version of how gay men fuck and love is presented for consumption. Small wonder that porn actors are idolised, elevating gay party events with their presence and live performance, endorsing sex toys, and gracing the covers of magazines. They are the aspirational role models for many gay men, stimulating desire that can never be satisfied because it is based on fiction. Here the power relationship is between the vendor — the porn producers, the magazine publishers, the party organisers, the club owners, the shop keepers — and the customers whose desires are stimulated and exploited for commercial ends.

As I confront my own desires — sentimental, sexual, physical, romantic, existential, past or present — dare I introduce them into my work in the face of all of the above? Anger — as difficult as I may find it to express towards another person face to face — is nevertheless a comfortable position when making pictures. Images motivated by anger usually represent what one does not want. It is a bare knuckle fight between the artist and the object of his wrath, very butch and one he cannot lose.  Under his armour of irony, sarcasm, moral superiority, an attitude of cool rage or indignant reproachfulness, the attacker remains hidden, his own desires and secret longings left unrevealed. In the face of the issues facing mankind, how pathetic and small may our own desires for love, belonging, security, acceptance seem, especially in their most childlike incarnations?

These questions are not easily resolved artistically. A few of my own and extremely debatable parameters would be to either avoid cliché — as most artists would hope to — or take cliché and remove it from its context, thus rendering it visible. I would like the pictures to be at once personal, in that they reveal something about me, and universal, in that they refer not to a specific situation, but are sufficiently open for a viewer to identify with if he is so inclined.

In this series, I am concerned with intimacy, trust, and proximity. The pictures are of two friends — a couple very much in the grip of a still fresh love — but I was keen not take their portrait. The images are not about this particular couple, but more about the intimacy and love in their gestures and positions.