“Taking momentary pleasures to their limit is a way of transcending history and death, and, in a doomed world, is even inevitable.”
—Dan Graham, Rock my Religion
From 2000 to 2007 I traveled to and documented anime conventions in hotels across the United States. Fan conventions are often frantic, intense, events, with thousands of people sewing costumes in the hotel rooms, dancing until dawn, and having (or at least dreaming of) those intense, often romantic, encounters with the people who share most their deep passion. Comprised of large, blurry, and dark prints from high speed black and white film pushed to its reproductive limits, Bridges of Desire is an intimate photographic look at the labors and and loves of this community.
The years while I was making these photographs was, unbeknownst to me, the start of unprecedented sea change in the American anime fan community. From what used to be a tiny subculture rooted in back rooms of comic shops and college dorms stacked with VHS tapes, the scene exploded across the landscape to become a mainstream success over these few confusing years. This was also the period that I was, for no reason I could fathom, drifting away from the very fan community which I spent many years of my life helping to build. In this way, Bridges of Desire was my attempt to document the hard work and deep desires of fellow fans during this turbulent era, but also grapple with a vast uncertainty about my identity and future.
