“Maybe I can’t find you, Peter,” darkly exclaims David Wojnarowicz, walking through a cemetery in his essay “Living Close To The Knives” (100). While detailing his harrowing and nerve-wracking attempt to find the grave of photographer Peter Hujar, who Wojnarowicz later describes as “my friend…my brother my father my emotional link to the world,” Wojnarowicz’s … Continue reading
“There are few things raunchier than a centerfold of ‘nothing,’” quips critic Bruce Hainley speaking to our preeminent filth elder John Waters in Art: A Sex Book. “The imagination can go wild.” Even with his purposeful witticism, Hainley is right. Sometimes just fractured glimpses of body parts–a hand, a silhouette, a mouth–amidst a sea of … Continue reading
Ren Hang (任航), one of the most recognizable burgeoning contemporary photographers, passed away this week at just 29 years old. Known for his evocative photographs with simple compositions and singular odd elements — exotic animals, unabashed nudity, repetitious visual slips — Ren made desire and openness the forefront of his photographs. Though highly staged, performed … Continue reading
Home can reveal so much about a person. Yes, this is an obvious cliché, but an individual’s architectural and interior design sensibilities–not to mention their cornucopia of tacky knick-knacks scattered around their existence–speaks volumes. This truism relates perhaps even more to queer individuals. Since, at the very least, the Decadents at the turn of the … Continue reading
Stumbling, bleary-eyed, back into the outside world, the morning after clubbing isn’t exactly the magic hour. Or at least, not typically. But, Richard Renaldi’s photographic series Manhattan Sunday not only merely captures the still-awake but not-yet-hungover post-clubbing period of 5, 6 or even 9AM, but it also glamorizes it. Continue reading
Isn’t there just something so alluring about obsession? Our preeminent filth elder John Waters has staked his entire career on it. A vocal supporter and enabler of fellow maniacs, Waters made the distinction between good and bad obsessions in an interview with Rookie Magazine. He explains: “Well, obsession can be good or bad. I mean … Continue reading
“I’m your transformer Call me Marlene Call me Gino That’s me, you know.” –Gina X Performance “Nice Mover” With her leather-bound looks and Quentin Crisp hero worship, Gina X Performance’s Gina Kikione knows a thing or two about androgyny and gender queering. Kikione opens her narcotic club anthem adopting the identities of both the preeminent old … Continue reading
“To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt,” says Susan Sontag in On Photography, who was one of many Downtown fixtures captured by photographer Peter Hujar. Present in Lost Downtown, an exhibition commemorating the devastatingly impressive … Continue reading
In Jay Prosser’s photographic study Light in the Dark Room: Photography and Loss, Prosser analyzes the power of photography to record absence, as well as–seemingly contradictorily–presence. As he explains, “photography is the medium in which we unconsciously encounter the dead…Photographs are not signs of presence but evidence of absence. Or rather the presence of a photograph … Continue reading
“Merrymakers dance the night away,” reads the bottom of a magazine sheet that the 2015 Baxter St Workspace Resident Pacifico Silano ‘tore’ from a vast collection of gay porn ephemera for his intricately hung solo exhibition at Baxter St Camera Club’s Chinatown location. Tear Sheets fits like a glove as a title to Pacifico’s practice, which … Continue reading