GAYLETTER

I read the notes for this photography and video show opening and got, well, horny! It’s been really easy to fetishize any kind of urbanite Slavic boy as of late. Honestly, I think even Trump has caught wind of this fantasy. “What once was the Eastern Bloc is now defining itself with and against a consumer history it never really had. Raw desires and energy — youth culture — come into tension with the ghosts of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Larry Clark and Gosha Rubchinskiy greet each other in the Brutalist architectural spaces of conformity and power.”

A handful of artists are included in the show, including our beloved Slava Mogutin, so I’m thinking it will be very sexy overall, with a pinch of melancholia. Some of the images I saw were boys in jockstraps; a penis peeking out of said jockstraps. The boys were photographed alone looking just the right amount of dirty. The show’s title ‘Baby, I Like It Raw‘ was enough to get me interested, but they hooked me with this: “If we were to find you all young and willing, easy and free…, and put you in a room, it might be something like this show. It might smell like black cigarettes, sex, and alcohol. It would be cold. It would be hot. It would shine brilliant and real. Clothing would be cast-off with innocence. There might be blood on the snow and the concrete.” I wish this was a lie, but I just put on I Like It Rough by Lady Gaga. …

Matthew Leifheit, former photo editor of vice and publisher of the savvy MATTE Magazine, is presenting a new show opening Friday, Jan. 13th at MAW. “Your Giorgio presents 13 translations from the secret scrapbooks of George Platt Lynes made by Leifheit in the past year. These works — comprised of a collaged book, short short film, and original photographs of varying scale — attempt to reanimate the queer archive through various poetic approaches to documentary.” We met and worked with Matthew nearly two years ago now when he shot some intimate portraits for GAYLETTER Issue 3. I can remember he spoke in a tender tone toward the craft of photography, and I went to find the latest issue of VICE at Printed Matter after I met him.

The work placed in Your Giorgio “draw upon photographs of the actual materials Lynes left behind, they remain assertively personal and elegiac.” Head out to the opening on Friday evening if you can, but if not, be sure to pop over to MAW over the weekend to get a look at his show. Should definitely be a fulfilling experience.

FREE, 12:00PM-6:00PM, MAW, 56 HENRY ST. #SE. NY, NY. …

From a young age we learn how much the flow of goods and capital can be livened up with a little mystery. (Think: Happy Meals, holiday grab bags, whether or not your debit card is going to get denied at your bodega on Sunday morning). Surprises rock! It’s an obvious, objective truism. You get excited, you beg for clues, you scramble to guess. The excitement is hard to contain.

And Visual AIDS — a contemporary art organization we’ve definitely told y’all about before — understands this excitement. Specifically, they do with the upcoming 19th annual ‘Postcards From the Edge’ benefit, scheduled for this weekend. This event provides “an opportunity for the public to purchase original pieces of postcard-sized artwork by both established and emerging artists for only $85 each.” And not without some mysterious fun; the individual cards are displayed, sans the artist’s names, the identity of whom you find out post-purchase! This is your chance to take home original pieces by favorites like William Wegman, John Arsenault, Loraine O’Grady, Benjamin Fredrickson, Marilyn Minter, Kerry James Marshall, and many more.

Image courtesy of the artist Benjamin Fredrickson

The actual benefit sale will occur all day January 14th and 15th, preceded by a Preview Party on Friday the 13th from 5:00PM-8:00PM where you’ll have the chance to win first dibs on your favorite pieces. VIP passes and a silent auction are also in store at the event, so head to the host gallery Metro Pictures for some awesome surprises that benefit an even more awesome cause. …

How has fashion influenced your photography style? How does photographing nude models change that approach? As a self-taught photographer… I guess that fashion has sharpened my outlook on many aspects of photography… If definitely taught me to me more conscious of my lighting, along with paying attention to detail in both landscape and content.

 
What do you enjoy most about the male body? Body hair and hair patterns. I love the lines of a man’s body.

 
How did you approach incorporating the already established Bel Ami brand and aesthetic into these photos? Did you conscientiously want to elevate their known look or take things in a new direction? What is the difference, if any, between pornographic photos and the ones featured in the book?  What influence does pornography have on your work in general?  I think more than incorporating the Bel Ami brand into these photos I was interested in incorporating my aesthetic into the Bel Ami brand.  Also, I wanted to make the Bel Ami boys a bit more masculine, at least in regards to my own idea of masculinity.  There are many, many photographers that have shot these boys… And I think we each want to capture them in our own unique style. …

With everyone and their dads releasing original content, we’re glad to know the folks at Grindr are starting to do the same. While other platforms have surely dabbled in productions related to gay life and culture, Grindr is guaranteed to bring audiences material created by queers, about queers, for queers. And soon: their first book will launch.

Thankfully it’s by L.A.-boy-gone-Berlin Matt Lambert, a photographer whose art we’ve admired for some time now. Simply called Home, Lambert’s work is concerned with space and its meanings, both physical and virtual. As we know queers’ conceptions of both these things — home and space — can often be fraught, malleable, and life-affirming, Home features photographs and interviews that are both intimate and poignant, warm yet also chilling. With a foreword penned by critically acclaimed queer filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, Lambert’s Home portrays generational and cultural shifts from the bars and bathhouses of the ‘70s to the virtual cruising grounds of the now.

These are spaces that gays begin interacting with in adolescence and onward, so Lambert’s decision to cast through apps like Grindr and Instagram is quite apt. This choice lead him to a group of beautiful boys, and this publication presents them as finding pleasure and intimacy in fucking, along with comfort and kinship in explaining the nuances of cruising and understanding one’s sexuality in our digital moment. With a Nan Goldin feel, infused with aesthetics that are particularly contemporary, Lambert’s photos express distance and proximity, love and something else. …

Any homo with half a brain knows that the history of “gay New York” is an exhilarating mix of sex and glamour and death and disease. It’s these opposing extremes which makes it so intoxicating to learn about. Which is why when we see a good opportunity to connect with our lineage we do just that. It’s one reason why living in New York City can be so exciting and melancholic — our history is all around us if we just look for it.

If you often lust for an NYC long gone, connect with the city’s queer history by checking out this campaign for the upcoming photo-memoir by photographer Marcus Leatherdale. He’s titled it What’s Left of Leatherdale, and is promising to offer viewers his unique perspective on “a place & time in New York City that stands as one of the most provocative, creative eras the city has seen.”

Marcus was thrown into the NYC art and nightlife scene in 1979 and slowly became an “It kid” and a contemporary to queer icons like Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, and Robert Mapplethorpe. This queen knew them all and he has the photos to prove it!

His work spans from 1978-2005. He’s seen Palladium go from one of the best dance clubs in town to a dorm for rich kids, worked, and lived, through the epidemic, and seen the city change from a nexus of art, culture, and nightlife to, well, however you wanna describe what it is now. …