Pastime

About four years ago, I began photographing encounters with different men in their private spaces, searching for intense sensations that, when they seemed to arrive, felt unreachable. This led me to create an autofictional narrative. Starting with a self-portrait in a sordid hotel room, I created a photographic series meant to be the culmination of all those encounters. Through the images, I included lived situations, recreated memories, or imagined new scenarios that could have taken place. Inspired by Lauren Berlant's theory of flat affect, "Pastime" explores the search for intense emotions as an ideal, contrasted with a resignation to the familiar. The series delves into boredom, absurdity, sordidness, and repetition, intersecting with small flashes of vitality and attachment. It questions how much time we spend in silence, bored, versus how much time we live intensely. By understanding encounters not only through human contact but also considering all surrounding details — a hallway, a staircase, a tree, a corner — the project perceives a broader image. There is a sense of resignation that reconciles both the urge to escape and experience intensely and the acceptance of returning and beginning to feel in a more attuned way.