This growing project xplores queer memory, sexuality, and fantasy through constructed imagery and collected stories. This first part of the project, Baseball Cards grew out of a series of interviews I conducted with gay men about their earliest sexual awakenings. I was interested not only in what sparked desire, but how those memories have stayed charged, humorous, or strange in hindsight.
I recreated these formative moments as staged photographs, styled with a sense of camp, parody, and playful exaggeration. The format of the baseball card a symbol of American boyhood and masculinity, serves as a frame to disrupt and subvert those same ideals.
Swipe -> This growing project benefits from a creative partnership with graphic designer Annie McLean. A Los Angeles based designer and motion artist who graduated from RISD with a BFA in Graphic Design in early 2024, McLean brings deep expertise in branding, print, editorial, web, and motion graphics. Together, we sourced authentic vintage baseball card packs, salvaging designs, textures, and print styles to build a visual language that feels nostalgic, physical, and timeworn. McLean translated those archival elements into layouts, typography, and packaging that evoke the nostalgia of childhood collectibles while supporting the campy, fantastical tone of each card. Her design sensibility adds clarity and playfulness to the project, helping the Baseball Cards look like awkward artifacts from a queer history that never quite existed but totally belongs.
This project is ongoing. The cards are the first chapter: a way of archiving stories through fantasy and fabrication, using humor and aesthetics to talk about something deeply personal. They hint at private truths while keeping just enough distance to stay playful.