QUEER: Homoerotic Photography

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Introduction Wilhelm von Gloeden George Platt Lynes Robert Mapplethorpe Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ Peter Hujar


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Contents

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The ďŹ rst

QUEER PHOTO I ever saw... George Platt Lynes

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GRAPH 7

Physical Beauty


Wilhelm von Gloeden George Platt Lynes Robert Mapplethorpe Rotimi Fani-Kayodé Peter Hujar

Introuction The first queer photograph I ever saw excited and confused me.

yet reclaimed). By then I’d bought and hidden a cache of those little magazines and I knew that their pictures were about sex, although I had only the vaguest idea what that meant. I’d been going to the library and looking up

Vince Aletti

homosexuality in the indexes of psychology

It was at a newsstand in the Jersey Shore town

books, which usually led to dry, alarming

where my family spent the week of my father’s

discussions of inverts, pathologies, regression,

summer vacation, sometime in the late ’50s.

and abnormal urges. Physique magazines

Tucked between bodybuilder magazines like

countered that tone of barely disguised clinical

Strength & Health were some pocket-sized

contempt with an upbeat, celebratory take

pamphlets with nearly naked men on their

on mid-century masculinity that was deeply

covers and titles like Tomorrow’s Man, Body

queer but butch enough to pass as straight.

Beautiful, and Fizeek. In one of them, I came

With few exceptions, however, they weren’t

across a picture of two dark-eyed young guys

holding up a mirror to their readers; they were

— they looked like regulars on Bandstand — in

providing us with all but unattainable objects of

nothing but stripped-down jock straps, one

desire: handsome, heroic, almost supernaturally

slung across the other’s shoulder like a trophy.

healthy young athletes (and mechanics,

It was titled Victor and Vanquished, and I stared

dancers, hustlers, pool boys, etc.). Physique

at it, mesmerized, until my mother called me

pictures hinted — obliquely, teasingly — at

away. I had no words for what that picture

homo sex but excluded homosexuals. We

meant, certainly no classical references to fall

were outside looking in.

back on. I’d seen kids horsing around in the

Around this same time, I came across

locker room at school, but I’d never imagined

another, even more potent image of naked men

anything as intimate as this. Maybe because I

together in the pages of one of my father’s

instinctively understood the way aggression

old U.S. Camera annuals. George Rodger’s

masked tenderness, there was something

famous 1949 photograph of a triumphant Nuba

thrilling about two naked men holding onto one

wrestler being carried upright on another man’s

another like that — something queer.

shoulders — the same totemlike image that

Queer was the word kids at school

Leni Riefenstahl said inspired her book The Last

used to describe sissies or guys they didn’t

of the Nuba — was breathtaking. A real-world

like. It didn’t have anything to do with sex,

Victor and Vanquished, the picture’s body-to-

homo or otherwise, until I was in high school,

body nudity was all the more stunning because

and by that time I knew they meant people

it was so casual, so matter-of-fact. When I

like me: perverts (another period term, not

realized that the two men were surrounded by

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George Rodger Sudan, Kordofan. The Nubas, 1949

a milling crowd of other muscular, naked men, I felt like I’d tumbled through the looking glass. For a profoundly inexperienced fifteen-year-old, the erotic possibilities suggested by Rodger’s photograph were overwhelming. I went back to that image again and again, as if hypnotized, imagining myself in that naked paradise. Clearly, queer is in the eye of the beholder, and mine was wide open and avid. Having grown up with moving images of Elvis, Fabian, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, Paul Newman, and Clint Walker, it would be reductive to say that my erotic imagination was shaped by two photographs. But the still image has always exerted a different sort of power for me, because a picture — in a book, in a magazine, in my hand — could be mine. To have and to hold. As they accumulated, those images began to define my life. The first thing I did in a new dorm room or apartment was tack pictures to the wall, claiming the space with Avedon’s portrait of the teenage Lew Alcindor from Harper’s Bazaar, a Warhol Flowers print, a cover of Body Beautiful, and the sleeve of a Frankie Avalon record. I wasn’t consciously

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queering the space, but as my rooms filled up with images of men, I realized I was queering the pictures. It didn’t matter who made them or with what intentions. Now that they were mine, they became expressions of my desire, my obsession, my imagination. They might not be gay, but they’d become queer. Context rules. So what’s the difference? Until it, too, is reclaimed, gay remains the weaker word: fey, wishy-washy, limp-wristed. Screaming instead of shouting. Queer is more transgressive, more audacious, tougher, unsafe, unapologetic. And, it seems to me, more open, more comprehensive. Queer is hungry, insatiable. It doesn’t have a look, a size, a sex. Queer resists boundaries and refuses to be narrowly defined. Which is why, more often than not these days, queer absorbs and appreciates gay, embracing both Cecil Beaton and , Duane Michals and Wolfgang Tillmans, Wilhelm von Gloeden and Ryan McGinley, Berenice Abbott and Zanele Muholi. And because queer doesn’t care who you’re sleeping with, it takes in Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Katy Grannan too. Like the photographs I couldn’t get out of my head, queer is unsettling and exciting and unforgettable. It bites hard and won’t let go.


Thomas Eakins, Study for "The Wrestlers", circa 1895

Richard Meyer Although it may seem hopelessly “’90s” to some, the word queer continues to provide a crucial means of opposition. In the recent book Art and Queer Culture, written by Catherine Lord and myself, we wrote, “We have chosen the term “queer” in the knowledge that no single word can accommodate the sheer expanse of cultural practices that oppose normative heterosexuality. In its shifting connotation from everyday parlance to phobic epithet to defiant self-identification, “queer” offers more generous rewards than any simple inventory of sexual practices or erotic object choices. It makes more sumptuous the space between best fantasy and worst fear.” The last line of this passage was a reference to an early 1970s gay liberation slogan proclaiming “I am your worst fear. I am your best fantasy.” By citing this slogan within a book on queer art published in 2013, Catherine Lord and I suggest that recursive power and expansive history of queer culture. For many years the work of queer photographers has been necessarily — if sometimes unwittingly — indebted to the sexual and subcultural imagery long preceding it. In some of the most exciting examples of such work, the photographer’s debt to queer history is openly, at times even extravagantly, acknowledged. For example, in 1991, Canadian photographer Nina Levitt partially erased a reprint of an 1891 picture by Staten Island– based amateur photographer Alice Austen of

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two female couples embracing, one of which includes Austen herself. The title of Austen’s original picture, That Darned Club, parrots the voice of an exasperated man excluded from the women’s intimacy while alluding, however lightheartedly, to the damnation of late nineteenth-century women who rejected the company and authority of men. Retrieving the photograph a century later, Levitt asks us to consider the visual record of lesbian life: what has been submerged that might yet be excavated or allowed to emerge. Like Levitt’s image, titled Submerged (for Alice Austen), the history of lesbian culture hovers between visibility and erasure, resolution and apparition. Artist Emily Roysdon has initiated an equally vivid dialogue with the photographic work of a queer predecessor, in this case the late David Wojnarowicz. Across a series of twelve photographs, Roysdon both reimagines and restages Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York series (1978–79) in which a man wearing a face mask of fin-de-siècle poet Arthur Rimbaud surfaces at different locations in 1970s New York City — riding the subway, shooting up at the piers, outside an X-rated movie theater in Times Square. Although many assume the project to be self-portraiture, in fact Wojnarowicz asked a friend to wear the Rimbaud mask and then followed him to different sites throughout the city. Wearing a paper mask bearing the likeness of Wojnarowicz, Roysdon produces a touchingly


inexact restaging of Rimbaud in New York.

on the Internet as representing a lost “golden

Where, for example, the original series

age of pornography.” Mapplethorpe’s interest in

featured “Rimbaud” masturbating on a hotel

Von Gloeden was part of the former’s broader

bed, we now see Roysdon pleasuring herself

embrace of the history of pornography. Before

with a dildo. Untitled (David Wojnarowicz),

Mapplethorpe took up photography exclusively,

2001–2007, bespeaks both an embodied

he was over-painting pages from gay (and

lesbian difference and a desire to create queer

occasionally straight) porn magazines. In some

art across the divides of both gender and

cases, Mapplethorpe would impose a bull’s-eye

generation. Central to the logic of Roysdon’s

over the figure’s genitals or a black rectangular

“surrogacy” of the earlier series is the double

bar over the eyes, thereby referencing the

displacement Wojnarowicz performed in the

criminalization and censorship of homoerotic

late 1970s — asking a friend, masked as a

desire as well as its persistence in the face of

queer poet from the previous century, to

such threats. In other cases, the over-painting

stand in for the photographer’s own journey

functions to focus the viewer more insistently

through the urban landscape.

on points of sexual exchange and homo-

Throughout the history of

affection. Although Mapplethorpe’s early

photography, queers have sought out real or

collages remain little known, they reflect the

fictive archives on which to base — and from

queer archival imagination that helped launch

which to stage — their own sexual imaginings.

his photographic career.

Living in Sicily at the end of the nineteenth

Queer photographers working

century, German aristocrat Baron Wilhelm von

today are likewise mining the long history

Gloeden, for example, choreographed scenes

of gay, lesbian, trans, and otherwise non-

of classical homoeroticism by photographing

normative sexualities. That history reaches

toga-clad (and unclad) adolescent boys and

back to the practice of photography from its

young men among fluted columns and other

earliest moments in the nineteenth century

faux-antique props. Von Gloeden’s photographs

and further still, to premodern histories of art

— collected by the writer Oscar Wilde,

and sexuality. As contemporary photographers

the sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and later, the

continue to experiment with new forms of

photographer Robert Mapplethorpe — reveal

affiliation and technologies of representation,

as much about the homoerotic imagination of

they simultaneously return to and reimagine

the late nineteenth century as about the sexual

the visual archives of the queer past.

culture or customs of Greco-Roman antiquity. Von Gloeden’s photographs are now hawked

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George Platt Lynes Robert Mapplethorpe Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ Peter Hujar

Wilhelm von Gloeden 1856-1931

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“My memoirs are not for historians. They can be of interest only to voluptuaries and artists.” – Roger Peyrefitte, Les amours singuliers


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Physical Beauty


Men by the seaside

When the French novelist Roger Peyrefitte wrote these words in 1949, he was not writing as himself or one of his invented characters but as the largely forgotten nineteenth-century photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden.

and artists." However, the mounting interest in von Gloeden over the last few decades suggests that the photographer would come to intrigue historians after all. "A famous photographer in his own day," writes Thomas Waugh, "(von Gloeden) has emerged from a half century of subsequent obscurity to become enshrined as the most important gay visual artist of the pre–World War I era". In the more than fifty years since the publication of Les amours singuliers, numerous

The "memoirs" in question assume von

articles, exhibitions, and books have advanced

Gloeden's voice but were composed by

the research on von Gloeden, assuring his

Peyrefitte and published as the dramatized

popularity as an early photographer of the

autobiography Les amours singuliers nearly

male nude and his prominent place within

two decades after the photographer's death.

queer (art) history. Nevertheless, Peyrefitte's

Moving between factual account and poetic

interlacing of historical fact and nostalgic

embellishment, the narrative describes a

fantasy has proved hard to shake. Even a

libertine artist who deeply admires his boyish

casual survey of the extant literature reveals

models and thrills at providing homoerotic

the tendency of certain details to vary greatly

pictures to a lustful clientele.

from one account to the next, the desire to give

Peyrefitte seems to think that von

Wilhelm von Gloeden

von Gloeden a vivid psychological interiority

Gloeden's story would have little to offer

for which there is little archival basis, the

historians, or perhaps that his experience

prominence of speculation and inference in

escaped the rational frame of historical analysis

ascertaining certain lost portions of his oeuvre,

altogether: von Gloeden was for "voluptuaries

and a broad sense of nostalgia for the time

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Fauns

and place in which he lived and the kind of

During his earliest years in Sicily, von

pederastic eroticism he was able to pursue.

Gloeden received an ample allowance from

While much attention has been lavished on

his stepfather and by all accounts led a

von Gloeden himself, the nostalgic historical

rather leisurely existence. He occupied a villa,

packaging that surrounds the photographer

employed one or more houseboys, and, as one

begs for an analysis of its own. In this sense, the

of few northern Europeans to have taken up

von Gloeden historiography — which includes

residence in Taormina, began to host members

scholarly texts and tawdry magazine articles,

of his aristocratic set as they underwent the

coffee-table books and pornographic Websites

Grand Tour. In addition to the town's natural

— offers a great deal more than the story

beauty, coastal vistas, and many classical ruins

of a single photographer; it also reveals the

(including the impressive Teatro Greco), some

influence of nostalgia and fantasy on the ways

of von Gloeden's male guests enjoyed another

that homoeroticism is organized, imagined, and

local attraction. After nightfall and much wine,

consumed as a historical feature.

so the story goes, von Gloeden and his visitors

Wilhelm von Gloeden, or Baron von

would routinely participate in wild orgies

Gloeden, as he is sometimes known, was born

with boys from the village. Though evidently

into minor Prussian nobility in 1856. After a brief

notorious in certain circles, the orgies seem to

stint as a student of art history, von Gloeden

have been tolerated. According to one account,

went to the art academy in Weimar, where he

von Gloeden's "bacchanalian revels... reached

trained as a painter. The young artist suffered

new heights of orgiastic abandon, but never

a severe lung condition, and by the time he

caused a scandal..."

reached his twenties von Gloeden's doctors ordered him to depart Prussia for a warm, dry climate. In 1878 von Gloeden settled in the remote Sicilian fishing village of Taormina, where he would reside until his death in 1931.

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Voluptuaries and Artists


Model Pietro in Gloeden’s and Pluschow’s garden at Posillipo Naples

Wilhelm von Gloeden

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The Boys of Taormina

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Voluptuaries and Artists


Model Pietro disguised as Bacchus, in Gloeden’s and Pluschow’s garden at Posillipo (Naples)

Wilhelm von Gloeden

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Jugendlicher Sizilianer, 1890-1900

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Voluptuaries and Artists


WilhelmPlatt George von Lynes Gloeden

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Cain, 1902 Two nude men from behind, cicra 1890

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Voluptuaries and Artists


Posillipo, cicra 1896

Wilhelm von Gloeden

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On this page: Posillipo, cicra 1896 On the next spread: Land of Fire, before 1898

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Voluptuaries and Artists


George Platt Lynes

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Physical Beauty


Untitled

Wilhelm von Gloeden

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Two nude boy along the seaside

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Voluptuaries and Artists


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Wilhelm von Gloeden Robert Mapplethorpe Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ Peter Hujar

George Platt Lynes 1907-1955

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“I am a pushover for physical beauty. All my life I have been extremely lucky... able to surround myself with it.” – George Platt Lynes


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Physical Beauty


Ralph McWilliams, 1951

George Platt Lynes

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This photograph archives queer, illicit desire in Cold War America. It was made by George Platt Lynes, and is part

Although McCarthyism is often understood as

of a set of male nudes that the photographer

the effort to purge suspected communists from

made in the decades leading to his death,

the State Department and other branches of

from lung cancer, in 1955. Because exhibiting

the federal government, the Red Scare equally

these photographs was a impossibility during

targeted homosexuals, who were forced out

George Platt Lynes's lifetime due to Cold War

of public service and into the closet. Wescott

homophobia, he circulated them privately

may well have been referring to the front page

among his queer kinship networks.

of the New York Times on March 1, 1950, where

Lynes was part of a closely connected

Secretary of State Dean Acheson testified about

circle of elite gay men who dominated American

the Alger Hiss trial and the loyalty program

arts and letters in the interwar and early post-

at the State Department. Although the article

war years. For 16 years, Lynes lived with the

purportedly concerned communism, it shows

writer Glenway Wescott and museum curator

that the red scare mainly affected homosexuals,

Monroe Wheeler, who were a couple for over

as Wescott clearly understood. Senator Bridges

fifty years; they had a variety of other sexual

asked John E. Peurifoy, Deputy Under-Secretary

partners throughout, including Lynes, who

of State in charge of the security program,

shared a bedroom with Wheeler during their

how many members of the State Department

years together. All three of them, as well as

had resigned since the investigations began

friends and colleagues Lincoln Kirstein, Paul

in 1947. “Ninety-one persons in the shady

Cadmus, and other leading figures, participated

category,” Mr. Peurifoy replied, “most of these

in sex parties in the 1940s and 1950s, as

were homosexuals.” This was not necessarily

documented in their personal papers. However,

newsworthy in and of itself, so far as the New

in the context of 1950s-era red scares, which

York Times was concerned in 1950, and the

particularly focused on homosexuals, the more

remainder of the article detailed the testimony

open sexual subcultures of the 1930s and 1940s

relating to other aspects of the hearings.

were driven even further underground. In April of 1950, Glenway Wescott

Lynes continued to make and circulate his portraits, despite this climate of

wrote George Platt Lynes that while the erotic

homophobia. He was very concerned that

explicitness of George’s nudes didn’t personally

the work find an audience, and published

concern him, he was worried for Monroe

it in several issues of the Swiss homosexual

Wheeler, since Wheeler held a public position

journal Der Kreis in the 1950s. He also became

as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

an important informant for Alfred Kinsey’s

“I really don’t mind scabrousness, etc., on my

research, as did Glenway Wescott and other

account, as you must know,” he wrote. “Only

members of their circle. Between 1949 and

that our poor M [Monroe] must conclude his

1955, Lynes sold and donated much of his

career with good effect and honor, I am anxious

erotic nudes to Kinsey, where they are now

not to involve him in what is now called (in the

part of the Kinsey Institute collections in

nation’s capital) ‘guilty by association’ (have you

Bloomington, Indiana.

been reading the columns and columns in the newspapers upon this and correlative points?).”

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Physical Beauty


Victor Kraft, 1936

George Platt Lynes

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Actaeon, 1937

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Physical Beauty


George Platt Lynes

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Male nude study, 1951 Untitled, 1953

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Physical Beauty


Jack Fontan, ca. 1950

George Platt Lynes

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Bandage and Bed, 1935

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Physical Beauty


Untitled, 1952

George Platt Lynes

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Robert McVoy, 1941

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Physical Beauty


George Platt Lynes

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Untitled, 1936 Charles Caskey, ca. 1936

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Physical Beauty


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Wilhelm von Gloeden George Platt Lynes Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ Peter Hujar

Robert Mapplethorpe 1946-1989

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“I wanted people to see that even those extremes could be made into art. Take those pornohraphic images and make them transcend the image.” – Robert Mapplethorpe


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frames, played with various matting techniques, and printed photographs on linen and silk between panels of fabrics. “He changed the medium he worked in and he changed the way we see it,” one critic has noted. “At his best, his work was a slap in the face.” Robert Mapplethorpe was born on November 4, 1946 to Harry Mapplethorpe, an electrician, and his wife, Joan, in Floral Park, a predominantly middle-class and Roman Catholic neighborhood in the New York City

“My work is about seeing: seeing things like they haven’t been seen before” Robert Mapplethorpe said in a 1986 interview.When Mapplethorpe's graphic photographs of the homosexual S&M scene first appeared publicly in 1977 at the art gallery the Kitchen, they turned the art world upside down, destroying previous notions of what subject matter was considered permissible in photography and redefining the traditional concept of beauty. With a slick and sophisticated style, Mapplethorpe juxtaposed underground, subculture subject matter with classical composition, which is a9lso evident in his subsequent photographs of black male nudes and flowers — often with homoerotic overtones — and celebrity portraits. “My work is about order,” he has said. “I’m a perfectionist.” Although many critics found his photographs overly slick and outrageous in content, Mapplethorpe’s work came to epitomize New York’s intellectual climate in the 1970s and early 1980s, combining, as one critic observed, “the appetite for both glamour and decadence, high fashion and subterranean sex. “ Calling on his background in sculpture, Mapplethorpe turned the photograph into an art object, and he often devised elaborate

Robert Mapplethorpe

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borough of Queens. He was the third of the family’s six children. Robert went to Mass every Sunday, and he has acknowledged that his Roman Catholic upbringing played an important role in his interpretation of reality. “A church has a certain magic mystery for a child,” he told Ingrid Sischy, as reported in her essay “A Society Artist,” which appeared in the Whitney Museum’s 1988 exhibition catalogue Robert Mapplethorpe. “It still shows in how I arrange things. It’s always been this way – whenever I’d put something together I’d notice it was symmetrical.” His enfant terrible temperament surfaced early, and in 1963, at the age of sixteen, Mapplethorpe left home to study art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he concentrated on painting, drawing, and sculpture. “I wanted to have the freedom to do what I wanted to do,” he explained to Dominick Dunne in an interview for Vanity Fair (February 1989). “The only way to do that was to break away. I didn’t want to have to worry about what my parents thought.” While at Pratt, he found a kindred spirit in the person of Patti Smith, the poet and musician, whom he met when she wandered by mistake into his basement apartment in Brooklyn. The two became such close friends that they lived together in Brooklyn and, later, at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. “Patti and I built on each other’s confidence. We were never jealous of


each other’s work,” Mapplethorpe explained

evident in those early works as well. Untitled

to Dunne. “We inspired each other.”

(1972) features a spray-painted image of two

After graduating from Pratt in 1970,

boys kissing, with a highlighted rectangle

Mapplethorpe began playing around with

placed where the censorship bar would

the idea of the photograph as an object. He

normally appear. Self Portrait (1973) depicts

appropriated images of macho stereotypes, such

Mapplethorpe bare-chested in a leather vest

as cowboys and bikers, from gay pornographic

and, in an early reference to S&M material,

magazines that he recut, spray-painted, and

with a clamp attached to his right nipple. What

assembled into collages. Mapplethorpe’s use

Mapplethorpe was trying to reproduce in

of commercially produced imagery reflected

those types of photographs was the reaction

the influence of the artists Man Ray, Marcel

he experienced when he first looked at male

Duchamp, and Andy Warhol. In 1970 Patti Smith

pornographic magazines in Times Square

served as narrator for the underground film

in the late 1960s. “A kid gets a certain kind

Robert Having His Nipple Pierced, which Susan

of reaction, which of course once you’ve

Daley made about Mapplethorpe.

been exposed to everything you don’t get,”

Robert Mapplethorpe’s interest

Mapplethorpe told Ingrid Sischy. “I got that

in photography grew out of his impatience

feeling in my stomach, it’s not a directly sexual

with the amount of time it took to produce a

one, it’s something more potent than

painting or a piece of sculpture. “I was bored by

that. I thought if could somehow bring

the time I was halfway through something,” he

that element into art, if I could somehow

told Anne Horton in an interview that appeared

retain that feeling, I would be doing

in the catalogue Robert Mapplethorpe 1986,

somethingthat was uniquely my own.”

which was published for a 1987 exhibition at

The turning point in Mapplethorpe’s

the Galerie Raab in West Berlin and the Galerie

artistic development occurred in the early

Kicken-Pauseback in Cologne, West Germany.

1970's, when, at the age of twenty-five, he

“Photography is just like the perfect way to

met Sam Wagstaff, a former museum curator

make a sculpture. You can do it in an afternoon,

and advertising executive, who called up and

put all this concentration into it and then you’re

asked, “Are you the shy pornographer?” At

on to something else.”

Mapplethorpe’s suggestion, Wagstaff began

Fearing that he might eventually be

collecting photographs, eventually amassing

sued for using other people’s photographs,

a collection that served as an education in

in the early 1970s Robert Mapplethorpe

the history of photography for both of them.

began taking his own pictures with a Polaroid

“Through him (Wagstaff) I started looking

camera that John McKendry, the curator of

at photographs in a much more serious way,”

photographs and prints at the Metropolitan

Robert Mapplethorpe recounted to Dominick

Museum of Art, gave to him. McKendry

Dunne. “I got to know dealers. I went with him

and his wife, Maxine de la Falaise, treated

when he was buying things. It was a great

Mapplethorpe almost like a son and introduced

education, although I had my own vision right

him to their socially elite set of friends. The

from the beginning.” Wagstaff encouraged

Polaroid appealed to Mapplethorpe because of

Robert Mapplethorpe to concentrate on

its immediacy and contemporaneity at a time

photography and provided him with a loft on

when painting had been termed “dead.”

Bond Street in Manhattan, as well as financial

An interest in eroticism and homoeroticism was

support. The two were lovers for a couple of

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Transcend the Image


It was in 1976 that Mapplethorpe’s first solo exhibition, “Polaroids,” opened at the Light Gallery in Manhattan, featuring self-portraits and portraits of friends, including the painter Brice Marden and Holly Solomon, the art dealer, as well as photographs of flowers and nudes. Many of the photographs were presented in sequence and in painted cases. “Sometimes to me the structure in which a photograph is presented is as important as the photograph itself,” Mapplethorpe told Anne Horton. One series, Patti Smith (Don’t Touch Here) (1973), features four shots of Miss Smith, framed in plastic Polaroid cassettes, two on each side of a central cassette containing the manufacturer’s warning: “Don’t touch here handle only by edges.” Commenting on his early work, Kay years, and then they became best friends. As

Larson observed in New York (August 15, 1988)

one woman friend told Dunne: “Sam made

magazine: “These early pictures are set pieces

Robert’s career. He showed Robert this other

– promising but self-conscious and labored, like

way of life.... When Robert met Sam, all the

the work of many young artists.”

doors opened for him.”

Spurred by invitations to show at two

By the mid-1970's, Mapplethorpe was consistently emphasizing the sculptural

using a large-format press camera and then a

quality of photographs. In Wood on Wood

Hasselblad, which resulted in greater penetration

(1974), he set two black-and-white photographs

of his subjects because he could slow down

of the back of a wood frame onto the front

the shutter speeds. With his new equipment,

of the same frame, so that both sides are

he created the works shown in the exhibitions

visible at the same time. In Self Portrait(1974)

“Flowers” and “Portraits” at the Holly Solomon

the viewer’s attention is divided between

Gallery, and “Erotic Pictures” at the Kitchen.

the image of a bare-chested Mapplethorpe

The latter exhibition, featuring photographs of

hugging a blank wall and the formal aspects

the homosexual S&M scene, resulted in instant

of the composition: a green frame resembling

notoriety for Mapplethorpe. “For me S&M

the shape of a Polaroid print after it is pulled

means sex and magic, not sadomasochism,”

from the camera, with cut-off edges at one

he told Dunne. The photographs depicted men

end and a pull-tab at the other. That concern

in leather, often with their genitals exposed,

with formalism reappears in Francois (1974-75),

performing various sexual acts or posing with

in which four head profiles are each cropped

S&M paraphernalia, such as whips and chains

within a trapezoidal frame, each shot tinted

Robert Mapplethorpe

galleries in 1977, Robert Mapplethorpe started

Robert Mapplethorpe’s approach was

in a different primary color — reminiscent of

participatory rather than voyeuristic, and he was

the multipanel paintings of Brice Marden and

more interested in the experience than in the

Donald Judd.

photography. “These were friends of mine, and

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striking in an exhibition setting, he introduced they weren’t hired, or manipulated into doing

a number of new printing techniques, including

things they didn’t want to do,” Mapplethorpe

platinum prints on linen and paper, Cibachrome

explained to Richard Lacayo of Time magazine

color prints, dye transfer, and color Polaroids.

(August 22, 1988). “The situation had already

In his flower pictures, such as Orchid

existed, they weren’t people play-acting and

and Leaf in White Vase and Baby’s Breath, both

doing something they hadn’t done before; they

from 1982, Mapplethorpe continued to attempt

had put it together for that photo session,”

to balance classical presentation with sexual

Robert Mapplethorpe told Gary Indiana for

themes. For Mapplethorpe, flowers represented

Bomb (Winter 1988). “So I had a very large

the sexual organs of plants. He also associated

amount of control over the situation.”

them with the phallic, in contrast to the female

The shock value of the homoerotic

connotations of flowers as painted by Georgia

photographs — such as Mark Stevens (Mr. 10

O’Keeffe. Mapplethorpe also reversed the usual

1/2, 1976), in which a man in leather pants with

female body stereotypes in his photographs

the front cut out arches over a ledge so that

of Lisa Lyon, the female bodybuilder, which

his genitals lie flat on it, Brian Ridley and Lyle

were collected in the book Lady: Lisa Lyon

Heeter (1979), in which two men decked out

(1983) and featured Miss Lyon in a variety of

in S&M regalia pose in a living room, and Self

postures, including as a bride, a leather-clad

Portrait (1978), depicting Mapplethorpe, with

S&M queen, and a pin-up girl. Some pictures

his back to the camera, bending over while

depict the female body in a manner usually

inserting a whip in his rectum — was tempered

reserved for the male body, with strong lighting

by the symmetry of the compositions, their

emphasizing Miss Lyon’s musculature. Those

conventional backdrops, and precise lighting.

photographs make certain portions of her body

Robert Mapplethorpe’s aim,

almost abstract, a practice that Mapplethorpe

Richard Marshall pointed out in his essay

was to develop further with his subsequent

“Mapplethorpe’s Vision,” which appeared in

male nudes. A sense of humor is evident in

the Whitney Museum exhibition catalogue,

such photographs as Lisa Lyon (1982), in which

was to “instill through his photographs

the bodybuilder tweaks her nipples while

dignity and beauty to a subject that was

staring defiantly into the camera — an image

outside the accepted norms of behavior.” That

that “coolly aims a shotgun at the cultural

preoccupation reflected his Roman Catholic

prohibition against self-arousal,” as Kay Larson

upbringing. As Steven Koch noted in an article

noted in her New York magazine review.

for Art in America (November 1986), Robert

Mapplethorpe’s studies of black

Mapplethorpe’s combining aestheticism with

male nudes were collected in two books: Black

“shame-laden concerns” was “an effort at

Males (1980) and the Black Book (1986). Those

reconciliation — a reconciliation, which, like

photographs illustrate his tendency to see

grace, is an essentially religious concept.”

people as objects and their bodies as pieces

In the early 1980's Mapplethorpe

of sculpture. Using “top of the line” models,

moved away from serial compositions and S&M

Cathleen McGuigan noted in Newsweek (July

themes to more refined subjects and images:

25, 1988), Mapplethorpe captured on film, often

male and female nudes, still lifes of flowers, and

using silver gelatin prints, torsos, backs, and

portraits of celebrities. In addition to enlarging

buttocks that are “so flawless they look like

the size of his work so that it would be more

polished bronze.” They also recall the influence

53

Transcend the Image


White gauze, 1984

of the still lifes of Edward Weston. The figures are often paired with flowers, as in Ken Moody (1984) and Dennis Speight (1983), suggesting a parallel between the sexual nature of flowers and the models exposed genitals. In Ken Moody and Robert Sherman (1984), another arresting image results from the almost overlapping of two shaven heads — one black and one white — in profile. The 1985 collection Black Flowers juxtaposed studies of flowers next to those of male nudes. In pictures such as Man in Polyester Suit (1980) and Untitled (1982), Robert Mapplethorpe depersonalized the figures depicted by obscuring their faces and conducted instead an “unabashed exploration of what has always been treated as the body’s disgraced member,” in the words of Richard Howard in his essay “The Mapplethorpe Effect,” which was included in the Whitney exhibition catalogue. In the first, that member is featured prominently while the rest of the torso of a black man is clothed in a cheap suit. In the second, a naked man stands with a Ku Klux Klan-type hood over his head. The photographs of Thomas (1986), in which a nude model strains in various poses against the confines of Leonardo da Vinci’s circle and square, demonstrate Robert Mapplethorpe’s continued preoccupation with geometry. The slickness that has been attributed to Robert Mapplethorpe’s art is perhaps most evident in his celebrity portraits, many of which appeared in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, Vogue, and Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Some of these photographs were collected in the books Certain People (1985) and 50 New York Artists (1986). “Certain People are, mostly, people found, coaxed, or arranged into a certainty about themselves,” Susan Sontag wrote in her introduction to the book, which features selfportraits of Mapplethorpe on the front and back covers. In one, he is made up like a woman; in the other, he poses as a street tough. In photographing his portrait subjects, Robert Mapplethorpe tried to find the part of them that is self-confident. “I’m only half the act of taking pictures, if we’re talking about

Robert Mapplethorpe

54

portraiture, so it’s a matter of having somebody just feel right themselves and about how they’re relating to you,” Robert Mapplethorpe explained in an interview published in Chicago’s Institute of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue. “Then you can get amagic moment out of them.” By the late 1980s Mapplethorpe was playing with different materials, lighting, and color, reflecting a heightened concern with the photograph as object. “I know how to make pictures but sometimes it’s too easy,” he told Anne Horton. “But I can keep creating problems with changing light. I can do color which is what I’m doing now.” Robert Mapplethorpe expanded his methods of presenting the photograph, including panels of fabric, printing on linen, and using expensive and elaborate framing. In Tulips (1987), once again an image with sexual overtones, Robert Mapplethorpe inserted a platinum print of tulips between two sheathed curtains of colored silk. The same idea was used in his photograph Michael (1987), in which a print of a male nude is framed by two panels of fabric. Calla Lily (1987) is a platinum print on linen, bordered in burgundy-colored velvet. The closeup color photographs of flowers, including Tulip, Orchid, and Poppy, all from 1988, prompted Ingrid Sischy to rhapsodize: “You can witness the emergence of every last drop of color right up to the surface, where it vibrates as though it could lift right off the picture.” at the peak of his success, Mapplethorpe’s health visibly deteriorated as a result of AIDS, which he was first diagnosed as having at the end of 1986, and he appeared at the Whitney opening in a wheelchair. Sam Wagstaff died of AIDS in January 1987 and designated Mapplethorpe as the principal beneficiary of his fortune, estimated at around seven million dollars. In 1988 Mapplethorpe established the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, to provide funding for AIDS research and for the visual arts. That same year Mapplethorpe asked his friends to pay 100 dollars each to attend a viewing of Wagstaff’s silver collection, before its sale at Christie’s in January 1989, using the funds to support community experiments with new AIDS drugs.


55

Physical the Beauty Transcend Image


Picture/Self-Portrait, 1977 Edition 3/10

Robert Mapplethorpe

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Picture/Self-Portrait, 1977 Edition 2/10

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Transcend the Image


Leather Crotch, 1980

Robert Mapplethorpe

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Jim, Sausalito, 1977

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Transcend the Image


Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979

Robert Mapplethorpe

60


Alan Lynes, 1979 On the next spread: Joe, 1978

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Transcend the Image


George Platt Lynes

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63

Physical Beauty


Self Portrait, 1980

Robert Mapplethorpe

Self Portrait, 1980

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Self Portrait with bull-whip, 1978

65

Transcend the Image


John, N.Y.C., 1978 Man in a Polyester Suit, 1980

Robert Mapplethorpe

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Transcend the Image


Ajitto,1981

Robert Mapplethorpe

68


Dennis Speight, 1983

69

Transcend the Image


Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, 1984

Robert Mapplethorpe

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Transcend the Image


72


Wilhelm von Gloeden George Platt Lynes Robert Mapplethorpe Peter Hujar

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ 1955-1989

73


“On three counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.” – Rotimi Fani-Kayodé


75


In African traditional art, the mask does not represent a material reality: rather, the artist strives to approach a spiritual reality in it through images suggested by human and animal forms. I think photography can aspire to the same imaginitive interpretations of life. My reality is not the same as that which is often presented to us in western photographs. As an African working in a western medium, I try to bring out the spiritual dimension in my pictures

Half Opened Eyes Twins, 1989

so that concepts of reality become ambiguous and are opened to reinterpretation. This requires what Yoruba priests and artists calla technique of ecstasy. Both aesthetically and ethically,

It has been my destiny to end up as an artist with a sexual taste for other young men.

I seek to translate my rage and my desire into new images which will undermine conventional perceptions and which may reveal hidden worlds. Many ofthe images are

As a result of this, a certain distance has necessarily developed between myself and my origins. The distance is even greater as a result of my having left Africa as a refugee over twenty years ago. On three counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for. Such a position gives me a feeling of having very little to lose. It produces a sense of personal freedom from the hegemony of convention. For one who has managed to hang on to his own creativity through the crises of adolescence and in spite of the pressures to conform, it has a liberating effect. It opens up areas of creative enquiry which might otherwise have remained forbidden. At the same time, traces of the former values remain, making it possible to take new readings on to them from an unusual vantage point. The results are bound to be disorientating.

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

seen as sexually explicit or more precisely, homosexually explicit. I make my pictures homosexual on purpose. Black men from the Third World have not previously revealed either to their own peoples or to the West a certain shocking fact: they can desire each other. Some Western photographers have shown that they can desire Black males (albeit rather neurotically). But the exploitative mythologising of Black virility on behalf of the homosexualbourgeoisie is ultimately no different from the vulgarobjectification of Africa which we know at one extremefrom the work of Leni Riefenstahl and, at theother from the victim images which ppearconstantly in the media. It is now time for us to reappropriate such images and to transform them ritualistically into images of our own creation. For me, this involves an imaginative investigation of Blackness, maleness and sexuality, rather than more straightforward reportage. However, this is more easily said than done. Working in a Western context, the African artist inevitably encounters racism. And

76


were inadequate or in some way unsuitable for the healthy development of young minds. In exploring Yoruba history and civilisation, I have rediscovered and revalidated areas of my experience and understanding of the world. I see parallels now between my own work and that of the Osogbo artists in Yorubaland who themselves have resisted the cultural subversions of neo-colonialism and who celebrate the rich, secret world of our ancestors.

Cargo Of The Middle Passage, 1989

It remains true, however, that the great Yoruba civilisations of the past, like so many other non-European cultures, are still consigned by the West to the museums of primitive art and culture. The Yoruba

since I have concentrated much of my work

cosmology, comparable in its complexities and

on male erotism, I have also had homophobic

subtleties to Greek and Oriental philosophical

reactions to it, both from the white and Black

myth, is treated as no more that a bizarre

communities. Although this is disappointing on

superstition which, as if by miracle, happened

a purely human level, perhaps it also produces

to inspire the creation of some of the most

a kind of essential conflict through which to

sensitive and delicate artefacts in the history of

struggle to new visions. It is a conflict, however,

art. Modern Yoruba art (amongst which I situate

between unequal partners and is, in that sense,

my own contributions) may now sometimes

one in which I remain at a disadvantage. For

fetch high prices in the galleries of New York

this reason, I have been active in various groups

and Paris. It is prized for its exotic appeal.

which are organised around issues of race and

Similarly, the modern versions of Yoruba

sexuality. For the individual, such joint activity

beliefs carried by the slaves to the New World

can provide confidence and insight. For artists,

have become, in their carnival form, tourist

it can transform and extend one’s Westernised

attractions. I am inevitably caught up in this.

ideas – for instance, that art is a product of

Another aspect of history – that of

individual inspiration or that it must conform

sexuality has also affected me deeply. Official

to certain aesthetic principles of taste, style

history has always denied the validity of

and content. It can also have the very concrete

erotic relationships and experiences between

effect of providing the means for otherwise

members of the same sex. As in the fields of

isolated and powerless artists to show their

politics and economics, the historians of social

work and to insist on being taken seriously.

and sexual relations have been readily assisted

An awareness of history? has been of

in their fabrications by the Church. But in spite

fundamental importance in the development of

of all attempts by Church and state to suppress

my creativity. The history of Africa and of the

homosexuality, it is clear that enriching sexual

Black race has been constantly distorted. Even

relationships between members of the same

in Africa, my education was given in English

sex have always existed. They are part of the

in Christian schools, as though the language

human condition, even if the concept of sexual

and culture of my own people, the Yoruba,

identity is a more recent notion.

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Outsider


It is no surprise to find that one’s work is shunned or actively discouraged by the Establishment. The homosexual bourgeoisie has been more supportive — not because it is especially noted for its championing of Black artists, but because Black ass sells almost as well as Black dick. As a result of homosexual interest I have had various portfolios printed in the gay press, and a book of nudes published by GMP. There has also been some attention given to my erotic work by the sort of straight galleries which receive funding from more progressive local authorities. But in the main, both galleries and press have felt safer with my ethnic work. Occasionally they will take on board some of the Iess-overtly threatening and outrageous pictures — in the classic liberal tradition. But

Bronze Head, 1987

Black is still only beautiful as long as it keeps within white frames of reference. I have been more disconcerted by the response to my work from certain sections of the self-proclaimed There is a grim chapter of European history

avant-garde, however. At the Misfits exhibition

which was not drummed into me at school.

at Oval House (which happened to coincide

I only discovered much laterthat the Nazis

with the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate

had developped the most extreme form of

the birth there of Lord Montgomery of Alamein)

homophobia to have existed in modern times,

I was asked, along with other artists, to remove

and attempted to exterminate homosexuals in

my work in case it attracted unfavourable

the concentration camps. It came not so much

publicity. We refused, naturally. Unfortunately,

as a surprise but as yet another example of the

the press were too busy paying homage to

long-standing European tradition of the violent

Monty so the national reputation of Oval House

suppression of otherness. It touches me just

was saved, and we were denied some free

as closely as the knowledge that millions of

publicity. As for Africa itself, if I ever managed

my ancestors were killed or enslaved in order

to get an exhibition in, say, Lagos, I suspect

to ensure European political, economic and

riots would break out. I would certainly be

cultural hegemony of the world.

charged with being a purveyor of corrupt and

For this reason I feel it is essential to resist all attempts that discourage the

Rotimi Fani-Kayodé

decadent Western values. However, sometimes I think that if I

expression of one’s identity. In my case, my

took my work into the rural areas, where life is

identity has been constructed from my own

still vigorously in touch with itself and its roots,

sense of otherness, whether cultural, racial

the reception might be more constructive.

or sexual. The three aspects are not separate

Perhaps they would recognise my smallpox

within me. Photography is the tool by which

Gods, my transexual priests, my images of

I feel most confident in expressing myself. It

desirable Black men in a state of sexual frenzy,

is photography, therefore – Black, African,

or the tranquillity of communion with the

homosexual photography – which I must use

spirit world. Perhaps they have far less fear

not just as an instrument, but as a weapon if

of encountering the darkest of Africa’s dark

I am to resist attacks on my integrity and

secrets by which some of us seek to gain

indeed, my existence on my own terms.

access to the soul.

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Under the Surplice, 1987

79

Outsider


Untitled, 1987

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

80


Nothing to Lose I, 1989

81

Outsider


Sonponnoi, 1987

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

82


Untitled, 1987-1988

83

Outsider


Nothing to Lose VII, 1989 Untitled, 1987-1988

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

84


85

Physical Beauty Outsider


Adebiyi, 1989

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

86


The Golden Phallus, 1989

87

Outsider


Every Mother's Son Children of Suffering, 1989

Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

88


Nothing to Lose IX (Bodies of Experience), 1987

89

Outsider


90


Wilhelm von Gloeden George Platt Lynes Robert Mapplethorpe Rotimi Fani-KayodĂŠ

Peter Hujar 1934-1987

91


“...and his death is now as if it’s printed on celluloid on the backs of my eyes.” – David Wojnarowicz


93

Physical Beauty


Male nudes are the subject of most shots: some with erections, some at the peak of orgasm. In a self-portrait, Hujar wears nothing but a jockstrap and looks like a Michelangelo model. Women appear in 5 photos and, perhaps as a joke, there's a photo of choreographer Merce Cunningham and his partner, musician John Cage. Seated, fully clothed, they look like a pair of sweet old grannies.

David Wojnarowicz Untitled (Peter Hujar), 1989

Love and concern "There's really an exchange in his pictures," says photography critic Vince Aletti. "Maybe

After photographer Peter Hujar died in 1987, and his friends gathered at his funeral, everyone realized they had one thing in common.

empathy is not the right word, but love and real concern. I think Peter often used the camera as a way of relating to people in a deeper way than he might verbally." Aletti was in San Francisco last week, along with Goldin, to speak about Hujar in a private event at the Fraenkel Gallery. The following afternoon, each sat in the gallery library and remembered their friend. "He had an ability to inhabit another

"Most people didn't even know each other,"

being's flesh," Goldin said, "and there's almost

photographer Nan Goldin remembers, "but

no photographer you can say that about. The

everyone was in love with Peter, and everyone

more you look at his work, the deeper it goes."

thought that they had been his best friend." It was Peter Hujar's charisma and empathy, in fact - his ability to connect with his subjects and engender their trust - that made possible his remarkable body of photographs. Whatever his subject - Susan Sontag in repose, his lover David Wojnarowicz or the transgender actress Candy Darling achingly sad but trusting on her death bed - Hujar had an instinct for findinga person's essential truth. Peter Hujar is the subject of "Love & Lust," a photo exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery. The gallery's third Hujar show in 12 years, "Love & Lust" eliminates his better-known shots of celebrities, animals and demimonde misfits — and focuses instead on his erotica. "This body of work," gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel said, has "always been controversial and somewhat incendiary. They've never before been brought together. Thirty years after Peter Hujar made them, the time felt right."

Peter Hujar

94

Friends jealous of friends Aletti, who met Hujar in 1969, said Hujar could see qualities and dimensions in people that no one else saw. Case in point: when Aletti met Wojnarowicz, he was prepared not to like him. "I think all of Peter's friends were jealous and a little skeptical of new boyfriends, and David seemed really inappropriate to me." But when he saw Hujar's pictures of him, "I completely understood what Peter saw. They made me see the beauty and depth in him that I hadn't seen at all when I first met him." Eventually, both Hujar and Wojnarowicz died of complications from AIDS, Wojnarowicz in 1992. Everyone who was close to Peter Hujar speaks of his talent, his beauty and sex appeal, his ability to command attention without demanding it. They also mention his depression and unpredictability, his anger,


his money struggles, his battles with gallery

in the face. "He really needed someone to be a

owners. "It's amazing he didn't kill anyone,"

buffer between himself and the world," Aletti

writer Fran Lebowitz said in a 1989 interview

said, "because he almost always ended up

that was reproduced in the Fraenkel Gallery

alienating and hating his gallerists."

catalog for "Love & Lust." "He was such a

Sex was his release. "He had the

profoundly alienated person, the most I've

sex life I never dared," Aletti wrote in an essay

ever known, a prisoner."

for the gallery catalog. "He cruised the bars,

Born in 1934, Hujar was abandoned by his parents, Lebowitz said. His father

the baths, the piers, the trucks, and nearby Stuyvesant Square."

disappeared when his waitress mother got pregnant. When she couldn't care for him, Peter was dispatched to grandparents and then to a brutal uncle who had several children and treated Peter Hujar like an intruder.

Sexual adventurer "Peter did every single thing in the world sexually," Lebowitz said. "Peter and I talked a lot about sex. It's not usual for men to talk about sex in a very detailed way with women.

Smart, hip and 16

He was a genius about it, really."

At 16, Hujar was living on his own in an

One would love to believe that Hujar,

apartment in New York. He found odd jobs,

in lieu of financial rewards, drew comfort from

met photography giants Diane Arbus and

his deep friendships, from the respect of fellow

Richard Avedon and slowly built a reputation.

artists. "He knew the value of the work and

He became emblematic of the New York art

knew there was genuine interest," Aletti said.

scene of the '70s and '80s - so much that

"But MOMA never bought his work, and that

it's hard to imagine him in today's glossy,

was always something he brought up. "There

obscenely overpriced Manhattan. Hujar rarely

were many times when Peter said to me, 'You

had money, and no clue how to market himself

don't really like my work, do you?' And what

or his work. "Peter did not take his clothes to

do you say to that? It's just the ultimate sort of

the Laundromat," Lebowitz said. "Peter washed

self-doubt. And that was really poisonous in a

them himself, because he never had any

lot of ways for him."

money." To eat, Aletti said, he often grazed at the buffet table of record-industry press parties.

Aletti remained close, though, and when he had money he often commissioned Peter Hujar to photograph a friend. "It was

Mapplethorpe a copycat? And, even though he was a contemporary of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe - and,

some way of supporting him. I was happy to do that. It was one way to give back, because he had given so much to me already."

according to Goldin, was imitated and ripped off by Mapplethorpe - he never achieved a fraction of Mapplethorpe's commercial success or brand recognition. "He would've had a bigger career if he'd been able to swallow s-," Goldin said. "If he'd been able to play the game." When a gallery owner eliminated Goldin's work from a group show, Hujar immediately dropped out in sympathy. "He had more loyalty and more integrity than anyone I've ever known," she said.Once, Hujar punched a gallery owner

95

Love & Lust


Self-Portrait Standing, 1980

Peter Hujar

96


David Wojnarowicz, 1981

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Love & Lust


On the next pages: Orgasmic Man, 1969

Peter Hujar

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99

Love & Lust


Peter Hujar

100


101

Love & Lust


Seated Nude, 1978

Peter Hujar

102


Seated Nude, Bruce de Saint Croix, 1976

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Love & Lust


Peter Hujar George Platt Lynes

104


Robert Bending, 1977 Daniel Schook Sucking Toe, 1981

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Love & Lust


Peter Hujar

106


Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1973

107

Love & Lust


Larry Ree Backstage, 1973

Peter Hujar

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Randy: High Heels, Halloween 1980

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Love & Lust


Merce Cunningham and John Cage Seated (II), 1986

Peter Hujar

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Love & Lust



“... a thousand hungry eyes are bending over the stereoscope as though they were the attic windows of the infinite. the love of pornography, which is no less deeply rooted on the natural heart of man than love of himself, was not to let slip so fine an opportunity of self-satisfaction. And do not imagine that it was only children on their way back from school who took pleasure in these follies; everyone was infatuated with them.”

Charles Baudelaire, “The modern Public and Photography”, 1859



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