Grindr publishes artsy, sexy coffee table book in memory of… Orlando?

From: Queerty

 This just in: Grindr has launched its very own publishing house and has commissioned a fancy new coffee table book featuring the work of Berlin-based photographer Matt Lambert to go along with its line of sexy athleisure wear released earlier this year.

Home features a series of portraits of gay men who Lambert connected with through the app, as well as other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. In true Grindr form, the models are all young, thin, and naked, with a tendency toward Anglo.

“I’d say the average age was probably, like, 21 or 22,” Lambert tells Dazed, adding that the limited-edition, 102-page book is intended to be “a snapshot of about twenty people that I’d met and had a conversation with about the ways digital or virtual spaces have helped them find a sanctuary or solidarity.”

He continues: “A lot of my work deals with intimacy and digital spaces and I’m not trying to present this dystopian view of the world, that romance is dead as a result of the internet, but rather to say ‘hey, we’re here now and digital spaces have done some really fucking incredible things for people over the last couple of years’.”

According to Grindr’s creative director Landis Smithers, the project was also inspired by the Orlando tragedy.

“After Orlando, we began to look for ways to express this common sense we all had that something had been taken away from us,” Smithers tells Dazed. “A sense of comfort in each other, in the ability to be safe, to walk or speak or simply exist in places we had taken for granted were ‘ours’.”

Lambert adds, “These spaces are incredibly important places to come of age, often before we’re able to come of age and come out in the real world. So the idea was just to document conversations with young gay men and ask them when and where that space was for them.”

It should be noted, however, that none of the book’s proceeds will actually go to any of the victims of the shooting.

Home is currently available for preorder and will ship after the new year. Here’s a sampling of what’s inside…