GAYLETTER

The first exposure I ever had to Jack Pierson and his photography was GAYLETTER Issue 1. His photo on the cover was striking but in a most subtle way. The moment he caught on Eli’s face is once that I find myself falling into. So when I walked into the GL office and saw Pierson’s new photo book The Hungry Years on our cute wooden slatted coffee table, I knew I’d have to take a look.

The book’s press release is actually beautifully written so I’ll relay it to you gorgeous readers. “The Hungry Years collects the early photographs of Jack Pierson, taken throughout the 1980s — photographs that have increasingly captured the attention of the art world since they were first editioned in 1990.”

“Informed in part by his artistic emergence in the era of AIDS, Pierson’s work is moored by melancholy and introspection, yet his images are often buoyed by a celebratory aura of homoeroticism, seduction and glamour. Sometimes infused with a sly sense of humor, Pierson’s work is inherently autobiographical; often using his friends as models and referencing traditional Americana motifs, his bright yet distanced imagery reveals the undercurrents of the uncanny in the quotidian. Fueled by the poignancy of emotional experience and by the sensations of memory, obsession and absence, Pierson’s subject is ultimately, as he states, ‘hope.’”

The book itself is about 100 pages with luscious full-color images on every other page. It’s minimally designed, which focuses the reader on the images themselves; the presentation of the photos is secondary — perhaps even tertiary. …

About an hour’s train ride from Lower Manhattan is the iconic (if not well-kept secret) Riis Beach. Named after Jacob Riis (the 19^th century “muckraker” journalist and photographer), the beach is just west of Rockaway Park in Queens. At some point or another in the last century or so, Jacob Riis Park has hosted a children’s hospital, WWI naval air station, Art Deco bathhouse, and softball field. And now it’s a cute destination for a delightful day trip with your friend, boo, sibling, or self.

The first time I heard about Riis Beach was one Wednesday evening in June when Abi and I were laying out  GAYLETTER’s weekly newsletter (No. 404). Upon looking for a photo to pair with that Sunday’s “Do: Riis Beach” post, Abi found this wacky photo of a guy wearing this Tina-Turner-Meets-Dragon-Ball-Z wig and said that it fit the personality of the beach perfectly. I knew I needed to see it for myself.

Last month, my best friend Ahmad and I hopped on the 2 train and headed out to Riis. If you’ve never been, the first thing you need to know is that there are two parts to it: there’s the straight side (near where the Q22 and Q35 buses drop you off) and a gay side, which is to the left, in front of the abandoned hospital. That’s where Ahmad and I went, and that’s where Ahmad met Gustavo Lopes. We just happened to go while Gustavo was documenting the beach that day. …

Mike Kuchar is well known for his films. John Waters cites him as his hero, which is a pretty big compliment. But he’s always been an illustrator; the work has just been more anonymous. Kuchar has always been successful in obscurity’s sense. He worked as a magazine retoucher in the 1960s and, after moving to California, became a go-to name in the then underground comic scene. While he and his brother George Kuchar are widely known film directors, Mike has always been drawing and painting, gathering attention of a much smaller audience.

Opening just last week, Anton Kern Gallery has curated an exhibition of some of Mike’s private collection on view through September. The drawings on exhibit have never been published or shown publicly before, so on the eve of his opening, Mike answered some questions I had about the works going into the premiere.

Do you believe your drawings share similar qualities to your cinema? Yes, because they come from my mind, which is creating moods and images, action and form. They are products of the same mind, and they’re libido driven.

The illustrations in the show have a perfectionist’s quality. What stylistic choices are you most attuned to when drawing? To design images and forms that excite the eye, done with competent skill and grace, so it can be appreciated on many levels… Not just sexual.

Gay artists tend to focalize phalluses for homosexual reasons, but do you believe besides masculinity and genuine homo-attraction there is another comment for work that details throbbing phalluses?  …

At Printed Matter’s NY Art Book fair in 2014, a cute little Mickey Aloisio approached our table and immediately complimented our magazine then got right to the point: He had images of men he had been photographing, specifically members of the bear community, and he wanted us to publish them. Subtle! We don’t really take submissions but his photos were refreshing and pretty sexy, so we printed them a year later in GAYLETTER Issue 5. I interviewed Mickey just as he had returned from an excursion along the west coast photographing the many men that make up the bear-community landscape. He told me he wanted to travel across America and photograph as many bears as he could find — he did, and the results are a series that is myriad in tone, but as a whole is totally tender.

He considers himself a member of the bear community, and has recently added his yummy Cub body into some frames, much to our delight. “I think because these guys have found this community, they’re living such a better life than maybe they would be if they were straight and had to deal with their bodies in the straight world.” Signed copies of Mickey’s book will be on sale at the launch on Septmember 8th at BGSQD at The Center and he will be in conversation with curator and writer, Efrem Zeloney-Mindell. When his images went to print in Issue 5, American Wildlife was just starting to take shape. …

I think I said this before, but I gotta say it again, every time Brian Clamp (from ClampArt) emails me about an exhibition I look into it because I trust his taste. His gallery and Ward 5B are presenting an exhibition that opened last week and it’s running until Sept. 23. It’s called Screaming in the Streets: AIDS, Art, Activism. It “focuses on the meaning of radical spaces for sexual minorities and reflects upon a generation of lost artists, while illustrating the interconnectedness and collaborative working relationships among them.”

The AIDS epidemic reached its peak around 1995, by which time there were about 48,000 annual AIDS-related deaths. “The story of the artistic and activist responses to this medical crisis were marked by intergenerational, communal, as well as individual associations…. Linked in this way within the context of the exhibition are Kenny Burgess, Haoui Montaug, Keith Haring, Ethyl Eichelberger, Jimmy De Sana, and many, many others.” The exhibition also celebrates the launch of Ward 5B, which is a service that specializes in the archival and curation of “late 20th-century urban ephemera and art, with a focus on punk aesthetic, radical spaces, performance art, drag, experimental theatre, camp, queercore, and guerrilla/street art projects.” I’d say, don’t miss it.

FREE, Tuesday-Saturday, 10.00 am-6.00pm, ClampArt, 247 West 29th St. NY, NY.  …

The breathtaking work by photographer Nan Goldin in her most recent book, Diving for Pearls, seems to point towards contextualizing the life within the inanimate, the intrinsic within the universal, the beauty within the mundane, and the ephemeral within the eternal. Like golden sunlight draped over your boyfriend’s sleeping head, this hauntingly intimate book struck me as an exploration of the ignored beauty that lies in the most well-lit corners of reality. Three image series are interspersed with essays by Glenn O’Brien, Lotte Dinse, and Goldin herself, exposing varied subject matter in the spirit of unintentionally stumbling upon beauty.

Goldin’s remarks, although printed last, seem to frame the first section of images. The thread that unites the two is a celebration of mistakes and the effort put into one’s work; the images presented are akin to those often discarded for their lack of distinctive focus and Goldin’s text reiterates the struggle to glean one beautiful shot from myriad shots taken.

Loosely organized around hazy landscapes, portraits fashioned through double and triple exposure, and still lives of statues and taxidermy, the first section of images in Diving for Pearls translates as a tender hug in the midst of a thunderstorm.

In his essay, O’Brien refers to Goldin as a rebel and a romantic. “Beauty in art is not just rare today, it is practically taboo, banished from the show it dominated for centuries.” O’Brien contests that Goldin’s photos may operate as subversive for upholding standards of beauty that have been largely left by the wayside. …

When GAYLETTER featured Bob Mizer’s glorious AMG: 1000 Model Directory in Issue 6, we had the best time cruising the pages and admiring the ridiculous amount of gorgeous men Mr. Mizer photographed. The models Mizer selected had similar bodies, but usually very different faces. He was not into just one specific look. To each their own; Mizer always wanted to photograph the next best body on Muscle Beach. He was a prolific caster, spending countless hours on the beaches of California looking for models, and the archive he left behind is enormous as it is magnificent and extremely important to the study of male physique photography.

More unknown, however, are Mizer’s films. Prior to our contemporary streaming services like Netflix or PornHub, Mizer was documenting his models in the moving image starting in the 1950s and then through the 1970s. It was exciting to hear that the Bob Mizer Foundation would be relaunching Mizer’s historic Physique Pictorial publication later this summer, but even more exciting is today’s premiere of PosingStrap.TV.  For the very first time, subscribers can view a plethora of the photographer’s films, including those displaying solo posing, wrestling and his full length story films.

Over the course of several months, the Foundation has worked to restore and digitize many of Mizer’s 16mm camera negative films and ready them for online presentation. With new films being added to the site every week, subscribers can also request specific films or models should they be itching for more from one of the models. …

Artist Kostis Fokas told us about his “wish to present a new take on the human body” with his surreal images in GAYLETTER Issue 1 and shared his magical series, Solosexual, in our cover story for Issue 4. Now he’s back with new work.

The GAYLETTER contributor is currently working on a project titled All I need is love / all I have is porn for “the indigenous people of the digital world.” With the images notably taking on a bolder direction when contrasted with his previous work, Fokas poses questions about the relationship between the human body and “contemporary digital interaction.” The series investigates the role the digital image plays in our search for love — and if we can ever find it in an age where we often satisfy our desires by “scrolling down [our] screens.”

Currently based in Berlin, Fokas is hoping to have an exhibition there by the end of this year. Meanwhile he’s rolling out the images on social media, and is generously debuting five new works with GAYLETTER as seen below. Throughout the photos, contorted nude models show the individual’s struggle to “behold another body in physical and digital terms.” With All I need is love / all I have is porn, Fokas presents a new type of romance through an erotic, contemporary conscious lens by navigating the perceived vulgarity of the effect digital intimacy has on the physical form. You can see more of his work and stay up to date with the project by following him on Instagram. …