The Bare Expat

23/10/2026

I went traveling in Andalusia looking for the Spanish half of the Moorish civilization I first fell in love with at the Metropolitan Museum in New York almost fifty years ago. I came back home to Vera Playa, in Andalusia, with a different story.
My new Bare Expat post, "The Andalusian Epiphany," follows a nine-day road trip from my home in Vera Playa to Córdoba, Seville, Ronda, Málaga and a couple of white villages, with a few castles I hadn't planned on.
What surprised me most is that Al-Andalus wasn't a Moroccan idea exported north. It was a meeting place and true cultural collaboration from both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar:
Roman and Visigothic columns hold up the arches of Córdoba's Mezquita, and a Byzantine master helped make its gold mosaics.
The heart of Seville's Real Alcázar was built for a Christian king, with Arabic inscriptions calling him "Sultan Don Bidru."
A Moroccan prince built Ronda's water mine, 231 steps down into the gorge.
Córdoba's workshops made the great pulpit for the Kutubiyya Mosque in Marrakesh.
There's plenty of food and w**e along the way too: a 1670 sherry bar in Seville, €2.50 glasses of excellent Ronda w**e, and a Málaga red with 40% Petit Verdot. There's also a Star Wars connection, two archaeology museums that blew me away and the one city I'd choose to live in for a while.
Full post and photo galleries here: https://bareexpat.com/the-andalusian-epiphany/
Have you been to any of these places? Which one would you go back to?

A road trip thru Córdoba, Seville, Ronda & Málaga reveals Al-Andalus as a meeting of cultures, with castles, Moorish palaces, museums & w**e.

19/09/2026

My first book is on its way, and pre-orders are open!

If you’ve wondered why I’ve been quiet here, much of my summer in Spain has been spent getting Queering the Media ready for publication. It’s the book I co-wrote with Jehan Agrama about a chapter of our lives that helped change what people saw on their screens and read in the news.

Queering the Media: From Headlines to Hollywood, How GLAAD Changed the World tells the story of a small band of Los Angeles activists who refused to let others define us. From living-room meetings to confrontations with Hollywood studios, from challenging harmful AIDS coverage to building the GLAAD Media Awards, we worked to change how le****ns and gay men were seen and understood.

We began writing after Trump’s first election. We wanted to preserve that history and share what we had learned about organizing, building alliances, and making change under hostile conditions. Those lessons feel more urgent now than ever.

The book arrives March 2, 2027 from Broadleaf Books, with a foreword by David Hyde Pierce. You can pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Soup.

I’ve written a new Bare Expat post about the book, the summer’s publishing adventures, and a very different second manuscript I’ve just finished drafting: https://bareexpat.com/book-on-the-way/

And thank you for being here. I’m looking forward to sharing more books, photographs, and life in Spain with you this autumn.

22/06/2026

I went to Madrid thinking I'd see paintings. What I came away with was less tidy.
Over a few days I worked my way through the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza — Velázquez, Bosch, Goya, Picasso, and more Madonnas, martyrs and beheadings than any sensible person should attempt in a week. But the real lesson wasn't a sequence of names and dates. It was how museums shape attention: how they invite us to look, and sometimes prevent us from looking.
Some rooms stopped me cold — especially a set near the end of the Reina Sofía devoted to q***r memory and the AIDS years, which pulled me straight back to sitting with my friend Bruce in his final months in 1992. And then there was the fabulous drag docent at the Thyssen: Hugáceo Crujiente.
At 70, I'm less interested in pretending to have mastered anything. I'd rather keep learning how to look.
New essay on the blog 👇
🔗 https://bareexpat.com/learning-to-look-in-madrids-museums/

14/06/2026

New post on BareExpat.com -- experiencing the deep layers of Spanish history. https://bareexpat.com/spain-in-layers-from-the-lady-of-elche-to-philip-ii/

22/05/2026

As a kid, I collected geodes. Yesterday in Pulpí, Spain, I entered one.
My latest post goes deep inside Mina Rica to visit the extraordinary Geoda de Pulpí — part mining history, part geology, part crystal cathedral.

Witness the stunning beauty of the giant geode at Geoda de Pulpí. A unique experience into a crystal-filled wonder.

20/05/2026

A new piece is up at Bare Expat — the most personal one I've written so far.
It started as an attempt to explain what I mean when I describe myself as a naturist, and ended up being about the whole long road that brought me here: the skipped-grade kid in the locker room, the young lawyer in three-piece suits, the GLAAD founder in Armani, the camper van full of dogs in the Pacific Northwest, the search for a community where I could finally live in my own skin. And how I ended up in Vera Playa Naturista, on the southeastern coast of Spain.
If you've ever wondered why someone would choose to live this way — or if you've been curious about the distinction between naturism, nudism, and the things people sometimes confuse with them — this one's for you.

What does it mean to call yourself a naturist? A personal essay on body acceptance, GLAAD, expat life, and how a kid who didn't want a body ended up living on a beach in Spain.

16/05/2026

Overcoming my single greatest challenge in relocating to Europe--getting licensed to drive in Spain.

As a 70‑year‑old expat with 50 years of driving behind me, I still had to start from zero in Spain: theory exam, formal lessons and three rounds of the práctica. Here’s what the process was really like, why it’s such an ordeal for non‑EU drivers, and how that green “L” on my back wind...

06/05/2026

New on Bare Expat: Art, Marble, and Feeling Unfinished at 70.
On a Vera International Photo Club Sunday outing last September — the day before I turned 70 — I found myself in the small inland town of Olula del Río, where two remarkable museums sit side by side in the heart of Almería's marble country: Museo Casa Ibáñez, a powerhouse of contemporary Spanish realism, and the Centro Pérez Siquier, the first museum in Spain dedicated to a single photographer.
What I didn't expect was to come home thinking about how unfinished a life can still feel at 70 — thanks to a quietly devastating painting by Miguel Ángel Mayo ("Golucho") titled Inacabado.
The full post — with practical visiting info, a long Spanish lunch, and a few thoughts on female longevity in Spain — is here:
👉 https://bareexpat.com/olula-del-rio-museums/

On a Vera Photo Club outing to Olula del Río, two remarkable museums—Museo Casa Ibáñez and Centro Pérez Siquier—reframe art, marble, and turning 70.

27/04/2026

A new name for a new chapter.

After many years as RJenningsPhotos, this page has a new name: The Bare Expat.

The rename reflects where life has taken me — from California to the central Oregon coast, and now to Vera Playa, on the Mediterranean shore of Andalucía in southern Spain. What started as a photography page has grown into something larger: essays, encounters, slow-travel notes, and yes, still photography — all from the perspective of an American who left and built a new life on the other side of the Atlantic.

A little more about me: I'm a writer and photographer who moved to the Mediterranean with two dogs, a camera, and a suitcase full of half-finished manuscripts. The Bare Expat is where my photography, essays, and slow-travel pieces live — alongside occasional notes on tapas, Spanish bureaucracy, w**e, and the quiet comedy of starting over in a new country.

If you've been following along since the early days, thank you for sticking with me. If you're new here, welcome. The website lives at bareexpat.com, and that's where the longer pieces land first.

The first new essay — "Getting Off the Bus," on why I left the U.S. — is up now. A second, on renouncing my U.S. citizenship, is coming soon.

Glad to have you along. 🌅

https://bareexpat.com/getting-off-the-bus/

Explore the journey of becoming a U.S. expat and the transformative experiences that come with moving abroad.