HIM Continued

Connor Fenwick Photography Projects • Spring 2019

Disclaimer: This work contains mature and sensitive material.

Proceed with care.

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- Image Titles and Descriptions -

Project Statement

My artistic practice involves creating an archive in response to my experiences as a queer individual living in a technologically-driven society. I am concerned about the ways in which technology, social media, and dating apps have impacted the social learning habits and mental health of my generation. Personal experiences that I am reflecting on and responding to in my work include crushes and infatuation, catfishing, losing an online partner to suicide, and being blackmailed with my nude photographs. In forming this archive, I intend to make visible the intimacy one can find within themselves.

As a member of the Facebook generation, I have been taught that making friends online, and interacting with people across the world, is more valuable than making connections with those nearest to me. In this way, people of my generation can lack in-person social skills, which often leads to unfilled relationships. As a platform, social media encourages people to put on their best face. This leaves a permeant trace of superficial reality. In becoming aware of my body and the ways in which it takes up space, I often find myself comparing myself to others online. This kind of behavior can be self-destructive. It also changes the way in which my generation connects and interacts with each other.

A recent addition to my archive is a video titled Take Care. I created this video in response to a previous relationship of mine with a British boy named Luke- a closeted Bi-curious athlete that I met online. Although we never met in person, we developed a strong connection, and I view this video as a portrait of our partnership. The relationship ended soon after I received a message from Luke saying he had attempted suicide and was in a counseling center. I never heard back from him after that. This work is composed of digital screenshots of our conversation, which reconstruct some of our shared narrative. I stage these screenshots through projection in my personal shower - which I consider to be a safe space - in which I am open with myself about my feelings and desires.

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