I Spy with my Little Eye… Queer(ing) Counter-Surveillance Tactics of Camouflage and Opacity in Dean Sameshima’s In Between Days (Without You) (1998)

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By staging an encounter between surveillance studies, art studies and queer theory, this article explores a queerness that disrupts surveillance, a queerness that invests and takes seriously refusals of certain forms of recognition and visibility. For In Between Days (Without You) (1998), Dean Sameshima photographed deserted private rooms of 1350 Club and Hollywood Spa, two former bathhouses in Los Angeles for men* who have sex with men* (MSM), which were, in the 1990s, under increasing conditions of continual surveillance due to conservative political trends and sexual panic fueled by AIDS. By choosing not to show human figures on a visual level and by concealing the locations of the baths linguistically, the artist found a way to convey a resistance to surveillance and cultural critique by showcasing the strengths of commercial cruising venues for men*—what is considered here as counter-surveillance tactics. By operating at the level of managing and subverting rather than avoiding surveillance, the use of tactics such as camouflage and opacity foreground how to (re-)negotiate and queer the visual sphere in this photographic art project.