Men's Room, Rest Room, W/C, Cloak Room, Caballeros... I've been photographing them for years. I don't mean the activities in men's rooms (!), but the empty rooms themselves. I'm attracted to the cold formalism of them; the variations in shapes, the colors, the design. Men's rooms are little architectural jewels, and there's a simplistic beauty to them. They're distilled fragments of an architect's or designer's vision. Sometimes they mirror the larger spaces that surround them, sometimes they don't. Some exude over-the-top luxury, some offer only the basics. In a world of diversity, they are familiar spaces that all males share. We instinctively understand their similarities and differences as we engage them for our common purposes. Men's rooms are unifiers. No matter where you are, the scene is basically the same: washbasins, mirrors, toilets, and urinals. Even though we never speak, look, or touch (absolutely never touch) when we're in them, in a fragmented and uncertain world, men's rooms are comforting refuges. Here are a few of the men's rooms I have known. -- Harald Johnson

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Tate Modern London August, 2003 Royal National Theatre London August, 2003 Harvey Nichols Edinburgh August, 2003 The Royalton New York City November, 2003 La Pedrera Barcelona April, 2006

(NOTE: for information about prints of these images, contact: harald@dpandi.com)

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