Gay cruising restroom

Martin has spent years collecting tens of thousands of historic objects and photos and conducting dozens of interviews about restrooms to try to capture the essence of that freedom. These so-called squalid, gloomy and stinking places were incredible places of social mixing: gays and straights restroom all social strata, men of all ages, cultural and religious backgrounds came together there.

That was my challenge with the exhibition: to restore the disturbing mix of sex and sensuality, utopia and urinals. Your focus is Berlin and Paris. Why these two cities? Public toilets around the world all tell the same story. For generations of men, they were a place for meeting and recognition. Fortunately, younger generations have the means to meet differently nowadays, at least in Western societies.

But what about countries where homosexuality is cruise prohibited? The motivation for this exhibition goes beyond mere nostalgia. I wanted to restore the image of these get-togethers, to shed an optimistic light on the importance these places had for the LGBTQ community. Public toilets have often been associated with murky perverts prowling around.

Against that stereotype I chose to show, in my photos, smiling faces and blooming, horny guys in an exciting setting. Most of the exhibition deals with men having sex in public toilets. What about women? Gay in toilets has always been a guy thing. And their cruise of view surprised gay. They said women use toilets for sex for different reasons: to get away from men, to have a safe space, to close the door behind them.

They would go there with someone they had met beforehand and knew, not with a total stranger. If you sat in a cubicle waiting for some hot woman to walk in, you might be sitting there for years. In the discussion it became clear that lesbians have a very different history with public toilets, one restroom is not so central, but one that is important and worth further exploration.

I only briefly touch upon it in my exhibition, with a section dedicated to the history of public toilets for women. When women were historically denied the opportunity to use public bathrooms—because of claims of indecency—they were basically kept at home. Because how could they leave the house for many hours without anywhere to pee?

What surprised you most about comments you received from visitors? The reaction of women is captivating.

How Queer People Found Freedom by Cruising Restrooms

It was opened to a page with photos of restrooms in Berlin that have since been demolished. What deeply upset me was that he had never before dared to confess to anyone the truth about his meeting the man of his life, precisely because it had taken place in a urinal! He then handed me the catalogue and asked me to write a dedication on that particular page.