Garritano contacted his subjects through their ads (he got no response to “90 or 95%” of the messages he sent, he told me) then arranged the sittings, where he would come up with the mood for the shots more or less on the spot, based on the subjects’ personalities and his interactions with them. “Seeking” presents each portrait alongside the subject’s Craigslist ad, which, taken together, convey a dizzying range of interests, personalities, desires, projects, anxieties. Many of the people posting are new to town, hoping to get a foothold in New York life. “I’m not sure exactly how to approach the city,” a young man writes, adding that he figures that his chiselled looks could earn him some fast cash working in adult entertainment, if only he had a friend to advise him. Others are veteran New Yorkers in need of a change of pace. “Gay White dude who is fed up with his bar fly, drugged out friends,” a man who resembles “a thin Rabbi” writes. A metalhead seeks other metalheads; a woman wants company for Zen meditation. Many are seeking professional connections—masseuses looking for bodies to work on, a yogi looking for students, a young woman who charges ninety dollars an hour to listen to people’s problems and extra if they want to cuddle—but many others say that they just want someone to hang out with: a “vegan bestie,” or someone to share an appreciation of ice skating and Latin dancing.
Garritano said that he sought out ads that seemed genuinely platonic, and yet there’s a whiff of sex in many of them—the woman who is looking for someone to show her around the city and says she’s “open to casual fun as well,” or the man hoping to clean someone’s apartment in the nude. Many make sure to preëmptively shut down sexual requests. The author of an “m4m” ad specifies “no gay guys sorry”; a twenty-year-old woman with pink braces warns, “i already friend zoned you so no funny thoughts.” Even when not directly present in the post, there’s an awareness of sexuality and appearance and how it complicates even the most platonic interactions; there’s a man who lists his location as a physical-rehab center—his portrait shows him lying in a hospital bed—mentions that he “did some male modeling (print, billboard and runway mostly in Asia and Latin America)” and adds, “that was then.”
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