Normal Evening is a stark and intimate black-and-white 35mm photography series that captures the raw, fleeting moments of a one-night stand set against the unremarkable backdrop of a cheap motel room.
The work strips away the romanticism often attached to casual encounters, instead presenting the evening as it is — ordinary, unspectacular, and imbued with a quiet, almost clinical detachment. The grainy texture of the film lends a sense of immediacy and intimacy, as though the viewer is witnessing the scene through a hazy, dreamlike veil.
The motel room itself is a character in the series, its cheap decor and fluorescent lighting adding to the disquieting sense of impermanence. The worn-out furniture, the sterile white sheets, the flickering lamp — each element of the space is captured with an almost voyeuristic eye, emphasizing the transitory nature of the encounter. The figures in the scene are captured in fleeting moments of vulnerability and detachment, their bodies tangled in the aftershocks of a brief connection. There is no tenderness or passion here, only the blunt reality of physical interaction and the weight of silence that lingers between them.
The black-and-white composition heightens the feeling of disconnection, stripping away the distractions of color and forcing the viewer to focus on the rawness of the situation. Shadows stretch across the walls and the bed, creating an atmosphere of quiet isolation within the scene. The stillness of the room contrasts sharply with the tension in the air — a sense of awkwardness, disinterest, or perhaps regret that remains unspoken, but palpable.
Normal Evening is a meditation on the emptiness of modern intimacy, where connections are reduced to brief, transactional moments. It’s a commentary on how the human body and emotions are commodified in the age of casual sex, and how, in these fleeting encounters, we often lose a sense of meaning or purpose. The simplicity of the images underscores the complex emotions that can lie beneath the surface of a seemingly inconsequential event. What may appear as a “normal evening” is, in fact, a portrait of a deeper emotional void, an exploration of how we navigate desire, loneliness, and fleeting human contact in an increasingly detached world.