Boyfriends

I photographed these young men, not to know them, but to know myself. Each boyfriend was a young man that I met as I traveled after dropping out of NYU to follow a deeper calling within myself for adventure and romance. I bought a ticket to Athens, Greece, a place I’d never been and where I didn’t know anyone. What unfolded was exactly what I was seeking, beautiful men in beautiful countries that all played an integral part in my development as a woman, and an artist.

One would think that this was a sensual journey, but it was one of connection. What I remember is not what happened between the sheets, but the meals that we shared together, the walks that we took, the seas that we swam in, and the conversations that carried into the dawn. My camera was an extension of these connections, and years later they continue to reveal to me new perspectives about myself.

Boyfriend Chronicles

Jonathon was a well-dressed British banker, who sauntered toward me while I was drinking a rum punch on the veranda of a pensione in Haiti, where I was teaching art classes. We made plans to have dinner together, when he proceeded to tell me that he normally preferred girls with larger breasts than mine. Two years later, in 1979, I was devastated when he broke up with me, in my mind we were headed towards matrimony.

Adonis was riding his motorcycle past me in 1978 down the streets of Ibiza, when our eyes locked. He asked me if I was lost and if he could help me. I ended up on the back of his bike, and then living in his house with him for two weeks. When it came time for me to leave, he tried to bribe me to stay by baking me a polenta cake.

 Arnoud, from the Netherlands. and I met in 1982, when I asked him for a cigarette at the San Francisco airport. The next day I picked him up on a street corner and together we took off for Yosemite National Park. Later, I cheated on him with Jeremy from Israel, and seeing the depth of feeling in his embrace in this photo, breaks my heart.