It’s interesting to imagine Stephen Barker’s thoughts about those nights, to consider his interest in recording that world, those moments. The camera gave him a sort of license to look and to see; it pushed his shyness out of the way so that he could interpret this world of men and what they communicated—lust at times, exhaustion at others, desire always—in a world where sex, not convention, had the final word. There was no “dating” here, no promise to call tomorrow; there was freedom, the freedom to give and take whatever you chose to give and take, with someone who had chosen you.
I met Stephen many years ago through a mutual friend, and I think he showed me his pictures then, but I couldn’t really take them in because of AIDS, which remains the formative experience of my young life. Stephen’s pictures made me afraid for the men I knew who were H.I.V.-positive or might become so. AIDS was a thief that changed the world where I had come of age; it robbed me and so many others of a life that we can’t describe, and which the universe forgets more and more, year by year.
It’s taken me this long to look at these photographs again, and I am glad to see them. Because they are, first of all, strong images about movement—people moving toward other people, glances that convey the desire to connect. Stephen’s pictures bring back certain smells—the disinfectant that was used to wipe up come; the pleasant moments sitting in the movie audience at Club 82, smoking a cigarette with a friend and dishing, though you didn’t go to Club 82 to talk much, except to joke about the experience you’d just had with a cock in your hand or in your mouth. What people went to Club 82 for was to experience bodies in a world of bodies.
