16-10-2025, 08:54 AM
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Article:
Photographer Natasha Caruana posed as a woman seeking an affair to find out, and grabbed snapshots of their furtive encounters
Portrait of an adulterer: secret shots of 50 married men I met on dating websites. T he huge leak last week of the details of 33m users of Ashley Madison, a dating website for married people (tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair”), probably doesn’t elicit much sympathy for those involved.
Click here for dating sites for married people infidelity
But what is interesting is the sheer number of users. Who knew so many unhappily married people (overwhelmingly, men) were actively looking for an affair on this site alone? What sort of men are they, and how do they feel about their deceit? Natasha Caruana, a photographic artist, has had a unique insight. Her project, The Married Man, which has just been released as a book, comprises photographs of 54 men she met on affair websites over the course of a year. You never see the men’s faces. They are deliberately dark and grainy, which adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and deceit. The seediness of the encounters is reflected in the dirty beer glasses and grubby tabletops of pubs and cafes. All you glimpse of the men is a disembodied arm in a blue office shirt, the sleeve of a dark suit, or some questionable knitwear. There are many shots of hands devoid of wedding rings. One, taken on a date at London Zoo, has a child’s buggy in the background – a haunting reminder of family. Brockwell. ‘A casual date drinking builder’s tea and eating sickly sweet cake from cheap Ikea mugs in a south London park.’ Much of Caruana’s work explores love and marriage – an earlier project, The Other Woman, was taking portraits of mistresses, another, Fairytale for Sale, is about women who sell their wedding dresses online. But The Married Man project was sparked by her own experience. She had been in a relationship with a man who was separated from his wife but still married, and was questioning how she felt about it. While she was in a dentist’s waiting room flicking through trashy magazines one day, she came across an article about a woman who was living her life as a mistress by choice. At the end of the piece was a list of sites where women could find married men looking for an affair. “I thought it was incredible how technology was changing relationships,” says Caruana. “I decided to start seeing a few men to see if it could be a project.” She didn’t use Ashley Madison, but two other sites for married people. What she found most surprising was that “on those dates, they would just talk about their wives – I became a quasi-marriage counsellor”. Caruana ended up going on 80 dates with 54 men. Most were in their 40s or 50s, and worked in business or finance. There were quite a few estate agents and men who worked in media, too. Almost all had children. Initially, Caruana met them for dinner, but soon realised it was taking too much time and it made her uncomfortable when they insisted on paying. She felt she should pay half, but as a student, the expense was mounting up. So she started meeting men for coffee or a drink in the pub. She also started restricting the dates to one-offs, early on, she met up with some of the men several times, but it was becoming awkward. Caruana was strict about not wanting physical contact with them, but one tried to kiss her on a third date. She realised then that one date was enough. Many of them said this was their first time and seemed very nervous, but others were serial adulterers. They had all, however, put a lot of thought into how to have an affair – pseudonyms were used, and every one, she says, had a secret phone. Primrose Hill. ‘We visited this bakery after the zoo. Hiding from the cold, tucking into coffee and carrot cake. I almost forgot it was a project.’ Photograph: Natasha Caruana. The men knew she was an artist, but none had any idea they were the subject of her work. At the start of the project, someone else was outside the restaurant taking photographs of Caruana with her dates, but it wasn’t really working. Then she started using a disposable camera, whipped out on the premise of photographing something on the table. “The men weren’t suspicious, they just felt like it was a harmless toy camera. Also, the ‘disposable’ aspect fitted with the concept.” Before she started, Caruana says she thought affairs were purely a sexual thing, “but I now think affairs are 100% an emotional thing. So many of the men talked about how they could go and have sex with a prostitute, but using those sites was to get something else. There is this fantasy of an affair, and I was able to show the reality – the mundanity, the loneliness.” The men Caruana met, she felt, “have to have a macho character at work and at home, and they didn’t really have anyone to talk to. It was just pattern after pattern.
Dating sites for married people infidelity
Article:
Photographer Natasha Caruana posed as a woman seeking an affair to find out, and grabbed snapshots of their furtive encounters
Portrait of an adulterer: secret shots of 50 married men I met on dating websites. T he huge leak last week of the details of 33m users of Ashley Madison, a dating website for married people (tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair”), probably doesn’t elicit much sympathy for those involved.
Click here for dating sites for married people infidelity
But what is interesting is the sheer number of users. Who knew so many unhappily married people (overwhelmingly, men) were actively looking for an affair on this site alone? What sort of men are they, and how do they feel about their deceit? Natasha Caruana, a photographic artist, has had a unique insight. Her project, The Married Man, which has just been released as a book, comprises photographs of 54 men she met on affair websites over the course of a year. You never see the men’s faces. They are deliberately dark and grainy, which adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and deceit. The seediness of the encounters is reflected in the dirty beer glasses and grubby tabletops of pubs and cafes. All you glimpse of the men is a disembodied arm in a blue office shirt, the sleeve of a dark suit, or some questionable knitwear. There are many shots of hands devoid of wedding rings. One, taken on a date at London Zoo, has a child’s buggy in the background – a haunting reminder of family. Brockwell. ‘A casual date drinking builder’s tea and eating sickly sweet cake from cheap Ikea mugs in a south London park.’ Much of Caruana’s work explores love and marriage – an earlier project, The Other Woman, was taking portraits of mistresses, another, Fairytale for Sale, is about women who sell their wedding dresses online. But The Married Man project was sparked by her own experience. She had been in a relationship with a man who was separated from his wife but still married, and was questioning how she felt about it. While she was in a dentist’s waiting room flicking through trashy magazines one day, she came across an article about a woman who was living her life as a mistress by choice. At the end of the piece was a list of sites where women could find married men looking for an affair. “I thought it was incredible how technology was changing relationships,” says Caruana. “I decided to start seeing a few men to see if it could be a project.” She didn’t use Ashley Madison, but two other sites for married people. What she found most surprising was that “on those dates, they would just talk about their wives – I became a quasi-marriage counsellor”. Caruana ended up going on 80 dates with 54 men. Most were in their 40s or 50s, and worked in business or finance. There were quite a few estate agents and men who worked in media, too. Almost all had children. Initially, Caruana met them for dinner, but soon realised it was taking too much time and it made her uncomfortable when they insisted on paying. She felt she should pay half, but as a student, the expense was mounting up. So she started meeting men for coffee or a drink in the pub. She also started restricting the dates to one-offs, early on, she met up with some of the men several times, but it was becoming awkward. Caruana was strict about not wanting physical contact with them, but one tried to kiss her on a third date. She realised then that one date was enough. Many of them said this was their first time and seemed very nervous, but others were serial adulterers. They had all, however, put a lot of thought into how to have an affair – pseudonyms were used, and every one, she says, had a secret phone. Primrose Hill. ‘We visited this bakery after the zoo. Hiding from the cold, tucking into coffee and carrot cake. I almost forgot it was a project.’ Photograph: Natasha Caruana. The men knew she was an artist, but none had any idea they were the subject of her work. At the start of the project, someone else was outside the restaurant taking photographs of Caruana with her dates, but it wasn’t really working. Then she started using a disposable camera, whipped out on the premise of photographing something on the table. “The men weren’t suspicious, they just felt like it was a harmless toy camera. Also, the ‘disposable’ aspect fitted with the concept.” Before she started, Caruana says she thought affairs were purely a sexual thing, “but I now think affairs are 100% an emotional thing. So many of the men talked about how they could go and have sex with a prostitute, but using those sites was to get something else. There is this fantasy of an affair, and I was able to show the reality – the mundanity, the loneliness.” The men Caruana met, she felt, “have to have a macho character at work and at home, and they didn’t really have anyone to talk to. It was just pattern after pattern.
Dating sites for married people infidelity