Artist’s Statement

Butts in Bar Bathrooms of Baltimore (BBBB) began with a simple idea: to celebrate the unique, wild, weird, and often overlooked bathrooms in some of my favorite bars around Baltimore.

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I have a friend who I would send phone photos of whatever bar bathroom I happened to be in, challenging them to guess which bar it was. More often than not, they got it right. There is something distinctly Baltimore about these spaces—their personality, character, humor, and unexpected beauty. Baltimore is known as Charm City, and I believe these overlooked, creative little spaces are part of what makes living here so special.

 

As I started sharing my idea of creating more artistic photographs of these bathrooms, I kept coming back to the feeling that the images needed something—or someone—to make them really pop. As a portrait photographer, it seemed natural to me to bring people into the photographs. At first, I imagined musicians, bartenders, staff, or the random characters who make these bars what they are.

 

Then a friend suggested, simply, “Butts.”

 

And I knew immediately: That was it.

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So BBBB became a celebration of Baltimore bars, their bathrooms, and the people—or, more specifically, the butts—that occupy them. The series is playful and a little ridiculous by design, but it is also my way of documenting the personality of the city I love through some of its most unexpected and overlooked spaces.