David Cade

My quasi-documentary project delves into the community of male sex workers, exploring the lasting repercussions of male-on-male sexual abuse upon them. A survivor myself, I've staged scenes in the cramped quarters of a dive one hour hotel where I and others rehearse and reverse the power dynamics of abuse. Graphic and direct, these black-and-white photographs provide a compassionate yet unflinching portrait of the ways their subjects seek to work through past traumas.

Survivors of male on male sexual assault and abuse live in what I choose to refer to as a liminal state. One which is seen as transmuting between an external façade of survival and an internal schism of psychological flux as they battle an overt state of PTSD. There is the constant struggle to reincorporate their psychic identity post trauma allowing a functional “normative” daily existence. The schism between the external and internal presents a discordant lifestyle as the trauma of sexual assault/abuse continues to monopolize the victim. It is through an internalized scaring of the psychological mind that the victim is thrown into a chaotic state rendering a normative existence a furtive exercise.