Bill Hayes writes: “In late 2018, a significant change in my life occurred—I became the owner of my late partner’s West Village apartment. The two-bedroom place was large—large enough to house Oliver’s beloved 125-year-old Bechstein grand piano, which was still there. I didn’t play piano. It was too large to move. I regarded it as a beautiful piece of sculpture and renovated the apartment around it. I turned one half of the apartment into a white-walled photography studio, with the piano right in the middle.
“I moved into my new home in April 2019. A couple weeks later, I had a shoot with a guy I’d hired as a model. (By now, I was interested in trying something new, exploring another genre: nudes.) I pulled out my wooden chair and took some photos, but it was as if the relationship between us had fizzled; the chemistry was no longer there. Then I suddenly thought of the piano bench; its legs were as shapely as those of especially muscular calves, but it had a dainty elegance at the same time. I placed it in front of the stark white wall. The naked model perched atop, and, as I began snapping pictures, I knew in an instant that the piano bench and I were about to embark on the photographic equivalent of a romance.
“Unlike the chair in ‘The Chair Pictures,’ which has an almost Amish austerity, the piano bench has a personality that comes through in photos. A model has to step up, even show off, to compete with that small but sturdy, modest yet flamboyant, old but timeless, beautifully crafted piece of furniture. One day it hit me why. It’s not just what it looks like; it’s also what it represents to me. The piano bench is Oliver incarnate: commenting, smiling, observing, enjoying the beauty—the human music—of the various men photographed on it.”