A Hybrid of Their Two Personalities... with Joey M

On 7th March I posted about meeting Joey M as part of my 3200ISO experiments, and mentioned how we shot him in his flatmate Marcos's room 'cos Joey's girlfriend was in his own room and didn't want to be disturbed.

I always like to shoot a guy in his own environment both for authenticity and because looking at their surroundings gives me inspiration. Typically when I arrive at a model's home I start scanning the room, looking at his objects, furniture, posters/art, books, clothes, etc. Then the ideas come. Often he will apologise for the mess, and I'll assert that mess is good. Sterility isn't inspiring.

Of course, with Joey, the environment being used was Marcos's, so the results of our session was sort of a hybrid of their two personalities. Still, since I didn't know either of these guys before, I didn't couldn't say that the environment was dishonest and I just pretended that it was all truly Joey. However, a couple things stood out as definitely not Joey. Firstly, there was quite a bit of photography paraphenalia (Marcos is a photography student). Secondly, there was a bottle of lube on the side table - a common sight in any gay man's bedroom - and as I said, Joey's upstairs girlfriend confirmed his sexuality. So ultimately the environment told me more about Marcos than Joey.

I did ask Marcos if he wanted some pics by the way, but he insisted he was too shy. A shame though as he had the cutest curly hair.

Elska Boy: Joey M

Location: London, England

Photographer: Liam Campbell

Elska Issue: N/A

#LondonEngland