Cruising In The East

2022 - Current, Medium Format

Cruising in the East builds on the ideas explored in Cruising in the West, but brings the focus inward, toward the familiar terrain of my own past. Rather than moving through distant desert landscapes, I’ve begun returning to the suburban neighborhoods, wooded paths, and overlooked margins of the towns where I
grew up. These are the places where I first experienced queer desire in secret, often without language or understanding, shaped by fear, curiosity, and isolation.

This project is still in progress. I’m revisiting sites around my childhood homes, my old schools, the edges of parking lots and public parks, spaces where encounters may have happened, or simply where I remember looking and wondering. These places hold personal history and collective tension, blending memory with the physical remnants of cruising in quieter, more repressed environments.

Like the western work, I photograph without intrusion, focusing on the spaces as they exist during the day, when they are inactive and exposed. Some images are restaged with others, while some focus on subtle evidence. I carry forward the same formal visual style, using sharp focus and natural light to draw out the details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Cruising in the East is about looking back while still learning how to see. It’s a return to the places that shaped my understanding of queerness, reframing them not with shame or longing, but with clarity and care. The work is a way of archiving what was never recorded, and continuing the conversation between landscape, identity, and desire.

Luca Varano

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