Yushi Li
“My Tinder Boys”
Edificio do Castelo
Yushi Li
My Tinder Boys
In the project My Tinder Boys, I photographed different men I met through the online dating application Tinder. During these unusual ‘dates’, I am both the violator who tries to ‘invade’ their private space and also the desiring object who participates in their vulnerability. It can be seen that there is certain precariousness to the way these men stage themselves for my photographs, which revealed men’s uncertainty in knowing how to be erotic for the camera. By putting these men in a stereotypically feminine and domestic space – the kitchen, I try to present them in a non-masculine and vulnerable way. Through my lens, each of these men has become a pretty and possesable object: an image. By creating these intimate encounters with male strangers and bringing these instant illusions of the desired life out of the digital screen, my work tries to question the idea of beauty and the distinction between representations and individual subjects in an era of rapid social change.