To desire nothing is the ultimate luxury and yet to do so would render one virtually inhuman. Desire is a key component of personality, a driver of ambition and a definer of identity.

Author Oliver James believes that we in the developed world are in the grip of ‘Affluenza’. Never have we been so financially wealthy yet so emotionally poor. In the desperate search for happiness and fulfilment, we are becoming crippled by desire. This collision of passion and sickness makes us addicted to shopping, to drugs, to glamour and to sex.

The West coast of America, a PVC-clad corner of the world, hedonistic adult theme park and fitting home of the Playboy mansion is a place where these desires, both material and sexual, have found a welcoming bosom. Here they are accepted, encouraged, indulged. It is the perfect location for Mr Permission’s office.

Taken by Dave Stewart in Coco de Mer on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, one afternoon in early December 2006, Mr Permission’s Office is a series of vignettes affording a glimpse into the nature of erotic desire. Inside the office lust and fantasy are given a private platform of expression. Equipped with an old-fashioned microphone, visitors are invited to anonymously record their erotic fantasies and by picking up with telephone they can listen to other peoples. Squinting through the peephole into the seductive changing room next door that offers another outlet for suppressed fetishes and here, they can be filmed and even uploaded to that other playground of sexual desire, the Internet. Documenting these desires is Mr Permission’s job but he remains dispassionate; the true stories of the participants, the mundane details and hardships of their daily lives are of no interest to him. Like a visual Alfred Kinsey or Brett Kahr, Mr Permission is simply opening the door on, and letting us at least peek into, if not play with fantasy and indulge ourselves.