Dean Sameshima photographed the exteriors of sex clubs in Los Angeles. The results are surprisingly poignant

Without already having context, it can be difficult to tell what the buildings that Dean Sameshima has photographed in the Wonderland series actually are. The names of the photos hint at erotic interiors, but at a glance, the buildings themselves are a world away from this promise. This seems to be the point: that these buildings, when devoid of the things that we might associate with them, end up blending into the background and becoming anonymous.

All of them are framed the same way: shot from across the road at a medium distance, presented with stark objectivity. They’re exteriors of sex clubs and bath houses around Silver Lake in Los Angeles and, presented by Soft Opening in London, around 30 years after Sameshima first captured the series (from 1995-97), the work takes on a new, more all-encompassing kind of emptiness. As queer spaces become increasingly precarious, and the policing of queer identity and desire becomes more violent, Sameshima’s images seem to have become haunted.

The entrances to these buildings are often hidden away in Sameshima’s photographs. In Untitled (Closed 1995), mesh screens conceal a door, turning the building – with the address ‘1800 Hyperion’ emblazoned on it in black letters – into an almost abstract space, its purpose unknown. In another, the door is cast under a shadow by the building’s awning.

The spaces, even from the outside, take on a kind of otherworldly quality; there’s a sense of something hidden behind these entrances that might elude a viewer on first glance, a world that can only be revealed by one who knows where to go to find it. The space of the gallery itself seems to highlight these ideas of impenetrability; rather than being vast and open, as it has been for previous exhibitions, here, Soft Opening is defined by a series of walls that divide up the gallery. Like the barriers and closed doors that Sameshima’s images highlight, it raises the question of exactly what lies beyond the threshold.

But the one threshold that seems to most concern the Wonderland series isn’t just about physical space; the way that the inner life of a building and its occupants can be hidden by an anonymous exterior. Instead, Sameshima’s work has, willingly or not, found itself on the precipice of time: an elegy or monument to what used to be. The absence of people in these images is impossible to ignore; with Sameshima having first taken the pictures in the mid-1990s, a decade after the worst of the AIDS crisis, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that even these spaces of queer desire are so often defined by the absence of bodies in and around them.

The world itself seems frozen in these images; in Untitled (Older Men, 1995), a blue building stands as a sentinel, its neon lettering switched off; the building to one side of it boarded up and covered with posters for gigs that have since been and gone. Sameshima has captured this world in a state of flux; one reeling from the AIDS crisis, and bracing itself for whatever is next to come.

Sameshima’s fragments of desire don’t just exist in urban spaces. Alongside his frozen bathhouses and sex clubs, the artist presents a series of exterior images; popular cruising spots in Griffith Park Los Angeles, and Harbour City Recreational Park in Lomita. As opposed to the stark, fragmented nature of the building photographs, Sameshima’s exteriors carry with them a kind of fragmented narrative; these are images that can read as a journey towards a thwarted or lost desire.

A series like Untitled (Griffith Park) seems to trace generations-old footsteps, propelled by a powerful, voyeuristic force, searching for the people that may have once been here. There’s a temptation when looking at these images to crane your neck, to try and get a sense of what might just be lurking beyond the corner, if, just out of view, there’s another body.

If there’s a central question that ties together the buildings and public spaces that make up Wonderland, its what, if anything, can be done with this emptiness. Through a spare, objective lens, Sameshima refuses to offer meaningful answers about either the cause of the absence in his photos, or a sense of what – if anything – can be done in the face of emptiness and loss.

These innocent-looking building façades, and fragments of parks seem to refute the idea of any kind of narrative – whether it's a narrative through time, or the arc of desire to a satisfying conclusion. Yes, this might be frustrating, but that frustration seems to be the point. Even the curation of the show itself speaks to this; the walls between photographs, and the fact that, at the end of it all is another image of another shuttered building. There are no answers here, and nor, the show seems to be hinting, could there ever be.

While Sameshima’s photographs carry with them evidence of the wider world – next to one of these buildings is a sign for a Dolly Maddison Bakery, a sign warning ‘beware of dog’ – it’s a world that remains spare, cold, lacking in humanity. While there is no wonderland at the bottom of Sameshima’s rabbit hole, there is still a place well worth spending time; even as it (deliberately) frustrates, and feels heavy with loss.

Dean Sameshima at Soft Opening until 23 May 2026

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