Photographer Sean Fader is a friend I met a few years ago while waiting in a casting call for Bravo’sWork of Art (the guy who won that first season, Abdi, was in our group) Anyway, I’ve admired his work for years and see him now and then, mostly in art–related situations – but during, 2010, the full year this project took, I didn’t see Sean much. Random guys did though. Sean signed up on 16 sites online dating and hookup websites looking for men who interested him. He looked at their profile and pre-visualized a portrait of who he thought they might be. Then he asked them out on a date that consisted of arriving at their home (never having met them in person) pouring them a glass of wine, and photographing them immediately. He directed them to enact his preconceived ideas of who he imagined them to be. After his photo shoot, he took them out on a date. This allowed him to consider how he might alter the first portrait of them. After the date, they collaborated on creating an image they both felt represented them. Sean says he would never describe his dates as “subjects.” “At worst they are sitters, but they are also collaborators,” he said. “I said to them, ‘I have a game to play. Do you want to play with me?’ And they are the ones who wanted to play with me.” Although it started out as fun, Sean said combining his personal life, his dating life, and his art into one project began to take its toll. “When it all clicked, it was the highest of highs. But when the date was awkward, when the photographs were bad, and I felt bad about myself — everything was about an exterior approval — when someone rejects you, it can be ego-bruising, and when you’re supposed to also be making work and when you fail at that, too … it deeply changed me.” I think the whole project is fascinating and brave in all areas. Sup? opens March 10 at the University of Springfield, Illinois and runs through April 10 (Photos: Sean Fader)
