An image that is grainy, indistinct, or dispersed over the surface of the screen invites a haptic look, or a look that uses the eye like an organ of touch. – Laura U. Marks in Loving a Disappearing Image
Anatomy of Desire engages with the performance of sexuality, identity and desire, but also focuses on a notion central to photography and lens-based mediums in general: the gaze and other related questions such as seeing and being seen, revealing and concealing, voyeurism and exhibitionism, and the tension between private and public.
Music and dance have had a great impact on me ever since I was a teenager. I came of age in the 80s, an era of incredible inventiveness, rebellion and anti-conformism. It was particularly visible in the domains of fashion and music, where designers and artists were questioning sexual conventions and gender identity before it became mainstream. Jean Paul Gaultier was putting skirts on men and Boy George and Madonna were toying with gender identity and sexual orientation in defiant and provocative ways. The gay subculture and nightclubs were one of the arenas where individual expression and an atmosphere of liberation, especially sexual and gender liberation, were at their height, but it was also a period of darkness and uncertainty with the spectre of AIDS hovering over us. I started to frequent gay clubs when I was 15. It was exhilarating to participate in this subculture for the curious and rebellious adolescent I was. And the subversive nature of homosexuality and gay clubs fueled my desire to be part of it. Many of my male gay friends encouraged me to come with them to backrooms, using my androgynous appearance as a disguise. I think it also excited them to share that side of their life with me and somehow perform it in front of me.
When I moved to New York in the 90s I was in my twenties, and naturally I explored the nightlife for several years with my friends, particularly gay nightclubs, private parties in abandoned and repurposed industrial spaces, even a boat sailing up and down the Hudson and East River.
In 2008, a personal event triggered a long period of insomnia, during which I started to go out again at night as a form of catharsis and a way to escape my own dark side. The vivid, almost theatrical aspect of the scenes I witnessed (some including sexual encounters between two or more men) fascinated me.
I had just acquired a Blackberry, which boasted the first generation of cell phone camera, very low-resolution. The file size didn’t exceed 100kb, if even that. There was no Instagram back then and Facebook was still in its infancy. I started to take pictures with my Blackberry in a very intuitive and random way, almost as if using the camera like a paintbrush into space, all while dancing and interacting with my friends and the strangers surrounding me. I became intrigued by the way the extremely low resolution of the images created texture and gave the bodies a sculptural quality while at the same time blurring the contour of the human figure and reinforcing its dissipation. The dematerialized surface of the images seemed to mirror the fleeting character of the close and brief encounters I photographed. I see a parallel between the mechanism of desire and the mechanism of photography in the longing to retain a momentary experience that is already gone once captured by the camera. Some of the images in the series are presented fragmented and significantly enlarged to the limit of abstraction whereas others are printed in a much smaller and intimate scale, inviting closer inspection.
Karine Laval
89books is an independent publishing house based in Palermo, Sicily.
Established in 2018 by photographer Mauro D’Agati, it specialises in photo-books and artist books. 89books is committed to the discovery and experimental publication of limited edition photo-books of different forms and contents. Some of the books will be presented in a first edition of 89 copies, except for artist books that could be produced as a collector’s piece or publications printed in offset.
By combining the expertise of the team and its network of collaborators, which feature local printers, binders and artisans, 89books aims to assist and promote the production of artists who use photography as their main medium and strive to compile a unique publication.
89books draws its inspiration from travels, accidental encounters and thought-provoking dialogs with peers and is largerly driven by contingency, curiosity and passion.
Karine Laval: Anatomy of Desire
Book design by 89books, Karine Laval
56 prints front back in a box + booklet
22,5 x 30 cm
112 color photographs
Limited Edition of 89, numbered and signed
Digital print
€ 180.00
