Franco Dupuy: Cruising Diaries

A photobook-cum-diary portrait of queer pleasure at its most raw, secret and uncontainable

Somewhere between photobook, artist's book and diary, Cruising Diaries explores the elusive visual language of cruising--a queer practice of anonymous sexual desire played out in public spaces, where bodies negotiate consent through gaze, gesture and instinct. Buenos Aires-born photographer and director Franco Dupuy miraculously captures what seems almost impossible to portray: fleeting encounters, unspoken codes and moments that vanish as quickly as they appear. Set in places that shift after dark--parks, train stations, beaches, saunas--the book documents a world that resists the camera, yet insists on being seen. He also presents artifacts from these sites--crumpled napkins, locker room keys, used shampoo packets--as evidence from a crime scene, each preserved in a small baggie and captioned with details about the item. In this way, Cruising Diaries becomes both archive and fiction: a love letter to the thrill of the hidden, and the politics of queer pleasure.
Franco Dupuy is an Argentine director and photographer based in Mexico City. He is best known for his film credits including Love, Stories, Three, Our Own Private Scene (2017) and La isla desierta (2015). His first book, Debut y Despedida (Paripé Books, 2023), explored rituals of love and loss. He also leads the online archive and digital restoration project for Metrópolis, a cult Argentine magazine from the 1980s which ran for only two years and 14 issues.