In 2000, I began experimenting with “online dating,” I immersed myself in a virtual “hook-up” culture. Creating a candid look into our collective cruising, this project, 1119, presents photographs of entrance doors belonging to strangers that I met online. The prints are almost full-scale, 72” x 92,” and their succession generates the anticipation of the unknown encounter. Using a large format camera at night with an exposure time ranging from 5 to 10 minutes, I captured Art-Deco pieces, paint peeling off walls, light fixtures, and surface materials that take on a geometric formal quality whose alluring facade hints at a carnal interior. Cropped tightly and center-aligned, the doors assume the artificiality of theatrical set pieces. The images are enigmatic: a physical marker of last night’s sex act.
Each photograph is named after a login username: EVhardcock, Bothends4u, etc. All are explicit yet anonymous monikers of the people I encountered. The act of looking tempts the viewer to penetrate the doorway and ultimately confront the thrilling nature of anonymity. I suggest that, “to revel in one’s own fear and expect the most of it might be the only true liberty still available to anyone these days.” My emotions are personified within the language of architecture. The doors serve as the only tangible memory I retain from these encounters. In 1119, I present photography that acknowledges the stain of desire in the architectonic. These are akin to trophies: portraits of faces admired, but lost to time and never truly seen.