In many ways, not unlike the acts depicted: exhausting, fun, painful, erotic. We made some of these photographs in 100+ degree heat. We all got sun-burned. I ended up with mild heat-stroke on one of the days.
It’s worth noting that I made a majority of the photographs on a large-format view camera. For your readers who may not be aware: that’s a large, clunky film camera that necessitates the use of a tripod. Nehemias and Chris would be engaging in a sex act, essentially performed for my camera, and then I would pause them, rearrange things, move my camera, refocus, change a lens, wait for a fly to land on someone’s back… all while they were begging for a break. They held these incredibly uncomfortable positions for ten, twenty, thirty minutes as I made these obnoxiously minor (but also incredibly necessary) adjustments. The second they heard the shutter click, they would release the tension in their muscles and just collapse into the dirt from exhaustion. In other instances, they would finally have the freedom to finish fucking while I stood and watched, which of course became research for the production of subsequent photographs.
Nehemias especially loves to give me a hard time about how hard I worked them. By his own admission, he also really loved it. In some ways, it felt like the master-slave dynamic characteristic of certain BDSM relationships. In that way, I was the un-pictured third-party to their intimacy. I’m sure it goes without saying, but the pictures are as much about me as anyone.