I carried out this project during my semester abroad in Santiago, Chile. As a constant observer of people and places, I am especially interested in how cultural norms affect our relationships with each other and our environment. I am always drawn towards the intersection between the social and the spatial. Taken aback as soon as I arrived in Santiago at the public and private dating norms of the city, I began exploring, through my own personal life and by observing others, how the conservative culture in Santiago pushed displays of affection into the public sphere in a manner that would surprise and perhaps offend many Americans. Most of the time, displays of affection (especially in regards to the youth who generally live with their parents through their 20’s) are not permitted in the home, nor are young couples usually allowed to be by themselves in their parent’s house. Thus, in parks, restaurants, mass transit and other shared public venues, the heterosexual couple kissing, or lying down together is ubiquitous.
I became fascinated by the outward public culture of affection in couples in regards to conservative Chilean society, as well as the absence of any homosexual couples in public. I began to document couples in public, trying to make sense of this culture of affection that seemed so foreign to me. I then decided to construct scenes, placing homosexual couples in public and documenting the passersby, juxtaposing gay couples with the environment that regarded their performance of affection as foreign. In these scenes, I explore the intersection between the constructed and the documented, the foreign cultural norm to me, with the foreign display of affection to them. I inserted my own Eros with the gay couples, into Santiago’s public life, deciding to take my own reality and place it in that, which I was present. The photographs then begged the questioning of what is real and what is constructed—each couples’ performance or the cultural norms in which they take place.
Another important part of public and private dating norms that I explored was that of the hourly motel. These are places that many couples, young and old, go to for alone time. I was interested in how the motel was a private space, but at the same time a shared public venue. A place where couples go for a few hours or a night of privacy, and a place that is also very much shared by the dating public. Learning through my own experiences, those of my Chilean friends, and through general observation, the hourly motel truly becomes a place where the public and private converge in Chilean dating culture. To explore this notion, I documented the facades of the mostly non-descript motels during transient times of day, and also began to construct scenes of intimacy inside of them, bringing to the public eye what is the known private motel moment, and presenting the exterior of the private motel to the knowing public eye. Through continuing to challenge the idea of the real and the constructed in a performance of affection in a photograph, I also juxtaposed the public with the private through the motel images, exploring the convergence of the two in the shared space of the hourly motel.
