SUMMER BOYS

These are images taken during the summer at a friend's house in Preston Road, near Wembley. During an uninterrupted spell of good weather, we had barbeques in their garden every day. There were five boys living in this house at the time and so I was drawn to this. This was a very different sort of masculinity than I had experienced before. Previously I had always been drawn to the strutting, peacocking pastiches of sports players. These boys were different. To start with, they were all on creative courses. They were all "apart from traditional society", all were outcasts at school, much the same as myself. But still, an inherrent MALE attitude springs forth. A desire to provide for the group, a desire to lead, a desire to prepare the meal, an easiness when it comes to removing clothes to feel comfortable, a jocular competitiveness, this is all alien to me. I look at these boys, who although would be considered different to some concepts of male culture, are all heterosexual and all able to pass as "one of the lads". I can see all them as wonderful fathers or brothers, and yet this is not something I can see in myself, and this is sad. These boys do not fascinate me the way the sporty peacocks do, they inspire a sense of yearning instead.