Boy Story is a photographic project about learning how to see what was always there, shaped by access and by being allowed to witness a world that was never hidden, only closed.
Over five years, I followed an international network of male performers: burlesque artists, go-go dancers, cabaret singers, and porn actors, moving between cities including Berlin, New York, Paris, London, and Copenhagen. What drew me in was not the performances themselves, but what happened around them. The moments before and after, when identities were assembled, adjusted, or quietly undone.
Backstage, in dressing rooms and temporary spaces, I watched performers construct themselves. Makeup, costume, gesture, not as disguise, but as a form of revelation. The act was not about becoming someone else, but about bringing a version of oneself into existence, one that could not always be lived in daylight.
The camera sits inside that tension. These images move between proximity and distance, between participation and voyeurism. There is no neutral position here, only different ways of being present.
Shot on black and white medium format film, the work embraces slowness and attention. Each frame carries the weight of decision, reinforcing the sense that these moments, fleeting, private, often fragile, matter.
Boy Story is not about spectacle. It is about the space where performance and life collapse into one another. A space where identity is not fixed, but made, tested, and performed, again and again.