Utopia is unattainable, but the endurance and pursuit of various kinds of personal and social liberation can be beautifully painful in its own admirable ways. Relented Desires (2020 - ) is an ongoing photographic and moving image body of work that envisions personal queertopia and the celebration of queer desire through duplicate portraiture and the digitally constructed image. This growing body of work began with the need to normalise moments of queer intimacy for myself and has expanded to illustrate the sexual proclivities and emotional lust of other queer folx. After countless hours of conversing about coming out stories, teenhood, and misunderstood sexual perplexities with these queer individuals, I directed a series of staged photographs, asking the participant to perform two versions of the self and/or the role of their own lover. Through the gauzy view of an improvised cellophane and Vaseline lens, subject and photographer negotiate one-sided poses which, once edited together in post-production, captures an alluring glimpse of revelatory self-intimacy. Crafting embodiments of queer liberation for others is a momentous task; it bears the weight of seeing and being seen for the first time, so I prioritise reflecting upon how I can maintain authenticity for myself and the subject.