“Being alone isn’t being lonely. Being lonely. Didn’t that band singthat song about being lonely? We were never feeling lonely.‘Causewe were never being alone. We had too much time to find for ourselves.That’s not right. Yes, yes. And we were never being lonely. We dressedup and fought, then thought ‘Make amends’… Being lonely. BruceWeber shot the video in romantic black and white at the Shangri-Lain Santa Monica. I never dreamt that I would get to be. The creaturethat I always meant to be… Was Bruce Weber canceled or did he justfade away? No, no, Being Boring is what the Pet Shop Boys sang. Wewere never being bored. ‘Cause we were never being boring. Oh, that’sdifferent than being alone.”- Bruce Hainley in “being alone” Designed to protect its occupants from judgement and persecution,the artist enshrines these private rooms, continuing his documentationof the architecture and physical characteristics of queer spaces.While Sameshima atypically retains the presence of bodies in theseimages, with no identifying features revealed, his focus locates moredeliberately on the anonymity of these individuals alongside theemptiness that surrounds them. Much like in Erdbeermund, a series of photographs of glory holes; orNumbers, an ongoing project of paintings where hypothetically joininga series of dots would form the outlines of explicit scenes, Sameshimaconcerns himself with depicting that which is hidden or concealed.Comparatively, in being alone, Sameshima’s highly contrastedphotographs totally vacate the cinema screens of imagery, with thisemptiness itself implying the liminality that queerness and queer desirecan occupy. This interest in negative space – in gaps, openings andcavities – as a tool for concealment, similarly reverberates throughthis series. Devoid of any pornographic material, Sameshima’s imagesinstead accumulate the remnants of presence, of a collective andpervading aloneness.Designed by Robert Milne and edited by Antonia Marsh, the book features a newly commissioned essay from American writer, critic and poet Bruce Hainley. Dean Sameshima (b. 1971, Torrance, CA) lives and works in Berlin. Hardcover, 88 pages, 30 × 21.6, English, published in the UK, edition of 500, July 2024.
