Dear Patron,
Today I am sharing pictures of John from January 2025 and the first part of an essay on my relationship with photography and marriage equality.
Part I
I started photographing naked men 15 years ago because I wanted to have sex. And why not? – what else do people in their early 20s think about? In the early 2000s, being a photographer was still one of the coolest things you could be. Back before we were overrun by social media, when there was still money in the field. Nick Knight, Annie Leibowitz and Gregory Crewdson were making photographs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. Ryan Mcginley’s photographs of skinny, naked, Williamsburg models dancing wildly in the woods were everywhere. I was young, and dumb, and wanted people to think that I was wild and free when in reality, I was 19, and boring and studying nothing in particular at NYU.
Photography made me “interesting.” I think it’s what got me invited to parties in college. Through all that, I got a reputation for being “too cool” mostly because I was a photographer, and I always left parties early. I think people assumed I was going somewhere better, cooler, more exclusive. What they didn’t know was that I was going home to smoke weed alone, order Indian food from that place on Second Avenue, and watch Twin Peaks in bed alone – a Friday night of my dreams.
I was always a shy person, I used the camera to explore things I wasn’t otherwise courageous enough to see. And for some reason, back then, I wanted to see everybody naked.
It’s fascinating to me now how much has changed since then, and how depressing it was in the early 2000s to be a gay man. How much the threat and shadow of AIDS hung over our heads, and how far away it seems now, how irrelevant.
This week, the Supreme court declined to hear a case that would revisit marriage equality. It’s a decision, which, I imagine, brought a big sigh of relief to a lot of people. I was 25, in 2015, when marriage equality was passed. I remember when, in 2012, it was a big deal that Barack Obama voiced support for gay marriage, a first for a US President. Some people thought it would ruin his bid for reelection. I remember in the 90s and early 2000s when almost no one, at least no one I knew, politically or otherwise, supported the concept of gay marriage.
In many ways, to be a gay adolescent at the time was about responding to this problem. Your best gal pal would find her first boyfriend, and you’d think about what it means to be a gay person dating publicly– “what’s the point of committing to anything if marriage isn’t possible?” Perhaps an absurd thing to think in high school, and yet still, a present thought. An older cousin would get engaged and more reality strikes. Your turn, or the expectation of your turn, is marching closer and the legal realities of your life become more potent. Something so prescient as your right to marriage, discussed on a national stage, was, for reasons I don’t think I fully appreciated then, humiliating.
Dating while gay in the early 2000s was confusing. What exactly was the point? Gay men of my age group–their early 20s in 2010– didn’t seem concerned with the idea anyway. To us, New York City gays, it was a foreign concept, something other people did. Uncultured people who lived in the suburbs and had good, uncomplicated, unreasonably boring, and annoyingly unexamined relationships with their parents. Many of us rejected the concept so fiercely that when marriage equality happened in 2015, we mostly made fun of it, even expressed anger at the idea. “Who wants to get married anyway?”
For me, at least, the facile linguistic monikers and slogans– all that “love is love” stuff– was the worst part. It felt like walking around with “live laugh love” tattooed on my face. The emotional tax required to buy-in was nearly intolerable…
So I didn’t.
I mostly stayed single. I made photographs. I asked people to perform sexuality for me. I got got laid and enjoyed being young. Some of the results of this pursuit are to be posted here.
Much more to come in the weeks ahead !!
Thank you for being here.
x
MM
Some Post Script notes –
For Prints and Books, please visit my website !
On December 1st, I will announce my paid tiers !
There will be digital access to uncensored nudes that will drop every single week on Wednesdays. I will also announce a monthly print club subscription! For $12, every month, I will mail you a 5x7 c-print of my work along with a letter and seasonal inspiration to excite your creativity.
Look for the announcement coming December 1!!
First orders will go out on January 1, 2026.
Lastly, as you know, I started this Patreon because social media is constantly taking my work offline and threatening to shut down my accounts. I am shifting my social media accounts to focus more on my still life and landscape work so I won’t be using them much to post about my nude photographs. So I ask, if you feel inclined, please help spread the word about the patreon by sharing this link with anyone you think might be interested.
https://www.patreon.com/cw/matthewmorrocco
Thank you for your support !
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