Jesse Willesee X Sticks & Stones Agency - Camera Club 2015

A DIY Abercrombie catalogue. Faux-voyeur. A pretty people party for the wannabelite. It reeks of construction. I’m struck by doorways and the utter bullshit of it all. Tattoo room with skateboards on the wall, hipster model getting inked by a sharpie. Thug life, everybody draw your anchors. The gangster skank setting. Americana emptiness room with cow skin rug and models of the beautiful oddity variety with taught skin and expressively slack faces. Underwear models playing with balloons and fighting the cold. Girls as light props, each full of air, empty rubber spheres. The DJ from the IT crowd. Even the few genuine looking people appear totally disillusioned. ‘What do they get?’ she asks me. Gen-Y decadence and spoilt internet kids. Models in nothing poses and celebrities who are famous for their fame, being paid in the ability to live a vapid lifestyle. For just a second the sign reads ‘Touch the models’, my brain acts in sedition.Wondering what the point is meant to be when I’m distracted by the one guy who looks like a salem inquisitor, wide brim pilgrim hat, a midnight cowboy in antiquated vestment. Dead flower room with the model who won’t move and the one who won’t sit still. Corporate cotton dominatrixes. So desperately wanting to be European, metropolitan. The windows speak of freedom and I hear Bret Easton Ellis calling, channelling his protagonist, ‘There is no exit here.’ - Photos by Candice Bridger