Phonesex

Photo by Phillip Toledano

“My first night, there was a gentleman who called himself Bob,” begins one woman in Phillip Toledano’s new book Phonesex. Toledano shares the stories and photographs of people working behind 1-900 numbers—people who are usually heard but not seen by their clients (or even co-workers).

The photos are taken within their homes, which are often also their working spaces. There’s everyone that you might expect and then some: the bilingual guy who calls himself “a ladies’ man,” the married mother with a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, the waifish young woman who describes herself as a manufacturer of fantasy. They pose in ripped jeans, tank tops, lingerie, and most often, T-shirts. Their stories are as disparate as the young woman’s combat boots below her white lacy skirt.

In Phonesex, Toledano seeks to explore the mutual self-delusion between caller and operator, the demands of being a “skilled verbal fantasist,” and in short, the theatre that is phone sex.