09/30/08
Text: Donari Braxton
Most of us haven’t played Where’s Waldo? since childhood. And while we’re reluctant to compare Gerald Förster’s newest exhibition, Nocturnal, to child’s play, there is a certain jejune pleasure in recognizing the series’ nested motif. “The idea is to have them somewhere in the background so you look into the light landscape and you realize there’s something else going on, [and] as soon as you do, in all the other pictures, you naturally look for the other couple,” Förster explains, referring to the ghostly blurs of naked flesh engulfed in each photo’s penetrative landscape. (And, no, that’s not a Photoshop sleight of hand.) Got the picture yet?
Nocturnal is a collection of scenarios in which nuanced, alien territories (Miami, Brooklyn and L.A. among them) are invaded by sexual intimacy at its most unabashed. The rapid mechanics of love-making blur the protagonists beyond distinction, blurring also the distinction between exhibitionism and voyeurism: “These things are happening all over the place, but you very rarely stumble onto it.”
Förster, a German native, began his project as a response to what he views as the taboo-based repression of American sexual culture, sending out word to colleagues, friends and the online community of his desire to find those willing “to be part of this open transgression.” “People asked me: ‘Well, I like the idea, but what do you mean exactly?’ And so I described it. One of my [photography] assistants and her boyfriend were the first couple willing to be in these shots. And as soon as I have one or two pictures to show others, they [all] understand right away what you’re talking about, and then it became much easier to actually meet these people.” The artist’s subjects, of wide-ranging ethnic backgrounds and ages (18 to 65), were then brought together in various ways. Sometimes Förster selected couples after meeting with them for a period of weeks; occasionally, he met his subjects for the first time on set. Close run-ins with the police were par for the course (“Sorry, this is a student project!”), and old women on late-night dog walks needed to be finessed. “It wasn’t necessarily the point to have [the lovers] really perform,” Förster explains. “We had a Kama Sutra book, and we picked different positions. Some actually enjoyed having sex, and some couldn’t quite get to the point.”
The carnally estranged beauty of Nocturnal is not its only trope. At the heart of the photographs is a brash anxiety over America’s wrongheaded impression of public sexuality; this is a society in which the most extreme forms of violence tend to be more acceptable than the tamest forms of nudity. “I’m trying to raise the question of your own personal relationship to sexual repression,” says Förster. And if he didn’t have your attention at the get-go, we’ll bet he does on the double take.
