Photographer Forrest Lenker recently won the NYU photography competition for his incredible 35mm raw photograph of his duo-cross-poly, committed, primary-second partner-once-removed cheating on him with his tertiary, second-degree ex-situationship at a hardcore Bushwick party.
Lenker describes the photo as “evocative but provocative, but like, totally gets you thinking, dude.” In the film shot, neutral lighting tones contrast the Marlboro Red smoke of manipulative Carhartt-wearing bros on one side of the frame with the Spirit Blacks smoke of the carabiner-carrying Park Slope butches on the other side. While Lenker was distracted fumbling around with all the dials “to get the aperture right” on his eleven pound camera his primary-second partner, Sequoia, started to hook up with his second-degree ex-situationship, Jaynx. Lenker hauled this “beastly but feastly machine” around openly to flex on the plebs who prefer to use their phone camera rather than 110 dollar rolls of arcane knowledge that became outdated before Yoko Ono stopped showing skin (or as Lenker describes it, his own personal 311). Yes, poor Lenker may have been born in the wrong generation: the good old days when mediocre white guys could still rely on their trust funds to purchase New York real estate has long since passed. Gone are the days where a performative Ritz-y cracker could wife up at Woodstock. Perhaps these meditations crossed the mind of Lenker as he snapped his 35mm raw photo. The fallout from the picture was instantaneous, Jaynx had been strictly banned from their eight-person polycule due to their lack of participation in the Polaroid boycott of ‘24. Sequoia since apologized reminding everyone her immense grief after the loss of her aunt’s cat last year which “like totally gave her an undiagnosed anxiety disorder,” and that’s not even to mention her traumatic upbringing in Tribeca where her family “didn’t even have that much money, like, compared to everyone else there.” Lenker admits though that not all are happy with his prestigious award, as indeed notorious polycule member, Leaf, left in the wake of the photograph for Lenker’s “biphobic bigotry,” and took with them another notable polycule member, Grass. In the end, Lenker feels gratified by the award and is excited to continue “expressing, like, my soul in this naked, raw way to anyone who will listen.”
