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When Ren Hang started taking photos, he was a 19-year-old advertising student in Beijing He would arrange his friends’ naked bodies, often in small white bedrooms, but also hanging off trees, submerged in streams, embracing on the tops of buildings The title of Hang’s recent retrospective at C/O Berlin, ‘Love, Ren Hang’ (2019-20), foregrounds the vulnerability of his subjects, as well as the friendship that holds that vulnerability, that seems to make it possible The title is also the end of a letter, a valediction that perhaps references Hang’s death by suicide in 2017, at the age of 29 Hang’s body of work evidences the delicacy of connection, and despite this, the persistent desire to touch His subjects grab at each other, hold mouths open, cup crotches, and contort around each other in often disorienting ways Each photograph seems interested in the body in relation, and in playing with the possibilities of contact   When I saw the exhibition in February, I had been thinking a lot about exes Or, I was thinking a lot about how we are all arranged around each other I had recently moved to Berlin and reconnected with an ex who lives here We’d dated for two years in London, but that ended in 2013 Finding ourselves living in the same city again, we are building a new friendship on the foundations of that old relationship In December, we were at a sex-positive queer feminist techno party The night had a set of guidelines pasted around the club, guidance primarily about the darkroom and the necessity of consent The instructions were a reminder to take care of each other, to be careful with each other’s bodies At some point, on the dance floor, my ex put her hand on my waist to move me so she could get to the bar It was just a small moment of contact, but it shocked me The touch was firm, her hand displayed a familiarity with my body My body, in turn, remembered so clearly what it felt like to be