the art of Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin

Featured in Kittredge Cherry's latest book, Art that Dares, Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin's work is a series of dramatic (sometimes disturbing, as in the series In Hate We Trust) photos. Her series Ecce Homo (key scenes from the life of Christ with a queer twist) is amazing. It received a very varied reception; some Christians saw it as a sacred expression of Jesus' relationship with outcasts; others saw it as a "satanic trick" and one man attacked two of the pictures with an axe - what a sicko. Ohlson Wallin based the tableaux on classic paintings. The full story appears in Art that Dares (Cherry, 2007). Check out Ohlson Wallin's website; better still, buy the book.

James Bidgood

Precious few people seem to have heard of the fabulous Pierre et Gilles, so presumably even less have heard of the lovely James Bidgood (who influenced their work).

I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of Corps Divins (P & G's more recent work) off the Marketplace of Amazon.fr - and the photos are beautiful. Particularly the Mercury one.

Anyway, I googled for James Bidgood and found more information than I had previously. He made a film called Pink Narcissus in the 60s and you can now get it on DVD.

Here are some of Bidgood's photos:

Pierre et Gilles

The French photographers Pierre et Gilles have produced numerous images of Christian saints, Hindu deities, and classical deities (Marcadé and Cameron, 1997: 197-223), and many of them are gay icons in one way or another (Vallet, 2006). The series of photographs of saints begins in 1987 with an image of Saint Sebastian, looking remarkably calm as he is transfixed with arrows, lashed to a tree-stump with garlands of roses. Sebastian has been a symbol of same-sex love at least since the Renaissance (Conner et al, 1997: 297), hence Derek Jarman’s remarkable film of the same name, and Pierre et Gilles created two more images of him in 1994 (Sébastien de la Mer) and 1996 (Le martyre de Saint Sébastien). Sebastian was also painted by numerous Renaissance painters, including Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, nicknamed ’Il Sodoma’ (Conner et al, 1997: 85). Pierre et Gilles have produced numerous other saints and deities, all depicted in an ornate and beautiful style. These include Joan of Arc, presumably chosen by the artists for her gender-bending activities and possible lesbianism (Conner et al, 1997: 190), whom they depicted in 1988 and 1997, dressed in armour and gazing into the distance. They also produced an image of Sainte Affligée, known in English as Uncumber or Wilgefortis, a legendary figure who grew a beard to avoid marriage (Becker-Huberti, undated). There are numerous other saint pictures, some of which seem to have homoerotic connotations, but mostly seem somewhat randomly selected.

Pagan deities that they have depicted include Adonis (1992), Amphytrite (1989), Bacchus (1991), Medusa (1990), Orpheus (1990), Venus (1991, 1992 and 2000), Adonis (1992 and 1999), Eros (2003), Mercury (2001), Ganymede (2001), and Diana (1997). Medusa is sometimes seen as a lesbian icon (Conner et al, 1997: 229). Orpheus chose male lovers after failing to retrieve Eurydice from the underworld, and it was for this that the Maenads tore him apart; legend has it that his friend Sappho buried his head (Conner et al, 1997: 258). Adonis was the eromenos of Dionysos (Conner et al, 1997: 43). Eros was also a symbol of same-sex love in ancient Greece (Conner et al, 1997: 132), among the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians for example. In alchemical texts, Mercury was frequently depicted as an androgyne; in Pierre et Gilles’ 2001 work, he appears as a graceful and muscular youth. Ganymede is well-known as the eromenos of Zeus, and the term Ganymede (or its Latin equivalent, ‘catamite’) was used as a term for young men who took the receptive role in homoerotic relationships in the medieval period by both pro- and anti-homosexual writers (Conner et al, 1997: 155). According to mythology, Diana shunned the company of men and preferred the company of women. It would seem from this brief survey that the association of the deity or saint with same-sex love or gender-bending may be a factor in their selection by Pierre et Gilles as a subject.