The advertisement says it sells briefs. What it sells is the body in the briefs, and the desire to look at that body. This diptych puts that desire on the surface.
The source images come from three separate advertisements by the same company, all for the same product: men's bikini briefs, shot at a pool. Each one carries the subtext swimwear advertising has carried for decades. The briefs are the excuse, and the man is the picture.
I compress the three advertisements into a diptych. One panel shows a model from the front, with one hand at his waistband and one arm extended. The other panel shows a model from behind in red-and-white briefs, facing the pool.
Side by side, the panels give the full figure from the front and from the back. That is a view of a man, not of a garment.
The blue moon and Jupiter 3 usually appear together in one collage. Here they are split: Jupiter 3 is in the sky of one panel and the blue moon is in the sky of the other. Because the pair carries across the seam, the two panels read as facing pages from the same book.
The diptych also shows who is looking. In one panel, a mustached man walks toward the model and looks straight at him. In the other, a second man stands behind the model and watches. Men looking at men is no longer something the viewer has to read into the image. It is what the image shows.
A photographer's lens points out of the frame, toward the viewer. The advertisement hides how it was made, and the collage shows it. The viewer looks at the model, and the camera looks back at the viewer.
All my work follows the same approach: take the subtext and make it context. The company sells briefs. The images sell longing. The diptych says so, briefly.
So what is being sold? On paper, the briefs. In practice, the contents of the briefs. In brief: longing and desire.
-Behan