There is a wonderful sense of calm about Youssef Nabil's photographs. It's a type calm that says to the viewer, nothing in this space is harmful. Within the confines of his frames, there is a sense of security and pleasure. The photographs project an overriding message that says, its right to love. They speak to the vulnerable condition of desire, the risks of commitment and the fear of loss. Nabil's photography consciously flirts with notions of the exotic and the erotic. The images slide seamlessly across a variety of different genres, they meld together to create a dreamlike mise en scéne. The photographs operate as visual narcotics, inviting the viewer, into a place of transgressive otherness, a place that breaks with convention.

Nabil's visual web draws us into the land of fantasy and strategies for survival, for without dreams we are in fact doomed. His photographs have a resonance with "Molina" the character in Manuel Puig's famous 1974 novel "Kiss of the Spider Woman". Nabil like "Molina" leaves us hanging on a thread of narrative tension. These photographs are loaded with a mood of quiet despair, they contain a sense of waiting that on reflection addresses a deep underlying personal political message that talks to issues of desire and freedom.
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