Married Man (2008 - 2009)

Married Man is a series of fifty-four images and a sound recording. The works are displayed in a large grid pattern, with five larger stand-alone prints; the sound is installed on a site-specific basis.

The series involved investigative journalistic research, and adopts a photojournalistic mode that is deliberately anti-aesthetic. Photographs were taken on a cheap disposable camera rather than professional equipment, so the images are intentionally grainy and loosely composed, but each was later carefully printed by hand. Caruana aimed to develop new ways of working, in particular by crossing over documentary and performance, and making the performative act of the photographer central to the work.

The project was to investigate on one level a typology of adulterers, whilst on another, to explore more broadly issues of trust, deception, and betrayal. Use of surveillance-type techniques raised innovative questions around ethics, freedom and the position of women. Married Man extended Caruana’s practice-based research concerned with infidelity in the contemporary western world and with the performance of masculine identity. It raises questions about the ethics and protocols of documentary practice: the use of surveillance-type techniques gives a new voice to the normally silenced ‘mistress’ stereotype.