Sup? Is a life work. For 365 days I trolled online dating and hookup websites looking for men who interested me. I looked at their profile and pre-visualized a portrait of who I thought they might be, and then I contacted them and asked them out on a date. The date consisted of arriving at their home (never having met them in person) pouring them a glass of wine, and photographing them immediately. I directed them to enact my preconceived ideas of who I imagined them to be. After our shoot, I took them out on a date. This allowed me to consider how I might alter my first portrait of them. After our date, we collaborated on creating an image that we both felt represented them.
Sean Fader works at the nexus of photography, video, performance, and lived practice. Sean earned his MA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he was the recipient of the Murthy Digital Arts Award and earned his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sean's work was included in First Look II: the best of the new artists in the U.S. at the Hudson Valley Center For Contemporary Art, White Boys curated by Hank Willis Thomas and Natasha L. Logan at Haverford College, Fon' Seks: Handheld Digital Technology and the Transformation of Intimacy at the University of Illinois Springfield, Dynasty, Curated by Sara Reisman, Christopher K. Ho, Amy Goldrich, and Omar Lopez-Chahoud at Hotel Particular (NYC), The Participants at Denny Gallery (NYC), How to do Things With Hair Curated by Barrak Alzaid at TheJamJar (Dubai), Undressing the Feminine at Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami), and a solo show of Sean Fader is the #Wishingpelt at Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago.) In 2012 Sean was named as one of the winners of the Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward Award for Emerging Photographers. Sean was named A Blade of Grass Fellow for 2012-2013 and received a NYFA Fellowship in photography in 2013. Sean's upcoming solo show, SUP?, will be at the University of Illinois Springfield. Sean resides in Brooklyn.