Nightswimming is a Photo book by Stephen Barker, praised for its honest and "painterly" (Spring, 1998) portrayal of the interactions in the dark rooms of New York City gay sex clubs and porn theatres. The book is made up of a collection of dark, enigmatic spaces populated by ambiguous figures. Despite losing on the battle of clarity due to the nature of the lighting in these spaces, the interactions between figures is clear. Sexual acts are perfectly distinguishable though come of more like a performance, a dance, rather than sordid activity. At points, the photographs reminds me of Bill Brandts Nudes, twisted and contorted bodies morph into abstract statues in the dark, figures merging into each other in the blurred motion of the slow shutter speed.
Justin Spring (1998) reviewed the exhibition "Selections from Nightswimming, NYC, 1993-4" for Artforum, referring to the timing of the capturing of the images, so close after the AID's epidemic of the previous decade, describing the acts as "Furtive and clandestine as ever". It seems that even in times when the very act of sex can cause such harm and distress, we need it more than ever. I could even go so far as to say that for many, the stigma, the risks, and the worry, may have even gone so far as to push people into the arms of others in the dark and fuelled the desire to lose one selfs in primal instincts and anonymity. In these rooms you can be someone your not, and in that way you can forget whats going your worries, or embrace them.
To Justin Spring Barkers work Aproximated Steiglitz's Photogravure with blurred tones, this image to me approximates the distorted "Monsters" of the Silent hill games I referenced earlier in this course. The horrific and uncanny nature of those of course, were that they did in someway seem humanoid, and here this human becomes almost inhuman in the dark, identity removed, just a doll, a plaything for other people in the dark. That is part of the nature of the Dark Room, everyone loses there identity, everyone becomes a body to be groped, we lose our sense of self and focus solely on our most basic of needs at that time, to touch, to feel, to taste and (to use the vernacular) to fuck.
Barker, S. (2019). Stephen Barker | Nightswimming. [online] Stephenbarker.com. Available at: http://stephenbarker.com/nightswimming/nightswimming.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
Spring, J. (1998). Stephen Barker. Artforum, 36(6), p.94.
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