The thirst trap has a formula. One man, alone, on a beach or in a mirror, performing for a camera that isn’t really there. The isolation is the product. It sells the fantasy of a body no one else gets to have.
Gay Restoration takes that image and breaks the formula. The man stays. But he isn’t alone anymore. Other men appear in the frame — walking the shoreline, standing at the tide line, going about their own business, making no claim on him and asking nothing of the viewer either. No commentary. No hierarchy. Just more of them there.
This is the first entry in a new series: solitary images, restored to community. The original source image and collage are included each time. With this collage, a Pink Moon watches from one corner. Jupiter 3 hovers in from the other, doing what it always does — arriving to witness, not to rescue anyone who wasn’t actually in danger. The beach was never actually empty. It only looked that way because the culture kept cropping everyone else out.
— Behan
