How have you start photography ?
I found the existing magazine photographs of male nudes or partially nude young men to be very wanting...actually quite tacky. The better magazines produced for straight men of pretty and quite willing young ladies often had a great deal of production value and I did not understand why the gay equivalent was so lacking of any investment beyond a used posing strap and maybe a sailor hat...and I am afraid even less imagination. It struck me that any representation of gay erotica should be just the opposite...with all sort of sets and props and bits of costume. And so I decided to become a photographer to glorify the American Male Nude much like a latter day Ziegfeld.
Like most every thing I have done or do...I did not go to any special school to learn how...I learned by doing. And I never thought taking a photo was all that difficult if you were already an artist and knew something about light and composition. I can paint and when I do a photograph.... I paint with light. Whatever ...the sort of photography I do does not involve very much knowledge of photography as much as being able to design and build a theatrical set because ...thats basically all I do is make a stage set ….put an actor or actors in it and then record what I see in the camera viewfinder.
How does it feel to be the main inspiration for artists like Pierre et Gilles or David Lachapelle ?
Well everybody is inspired or uses accumulated imagery from someone else when they do a photo or painting. How does Maxfield Parrish feel that so much of what I tried to achieve was inspired by his paintings. How do Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger feel knowing that the film Red Shoes had even more of an effect on what I do or did? Or George Quaintance because his paintings were what I thought my photos should be. Of course I will never know because they are all dead! And anyway I have never really believed I had all that much to do with either Pierre et Gilles or David Lachapelle's work. I only wish I had some of their good fortune.
I love to look on the internet at beautiful exotic things like the endless variety of flowers in the world and all the fantasy that lives under water near coral reefs. Beautiful birds ….and spiders and butterflies and moths. I spend hour after hour marveling at the extraordinary kinds of life that exist in nature. The intricate design..the brilliant color...it is all so awesome and fills my head with things to emulate somehow if possible.
How have you created these elaborated scenes that we can see on your pictures without digital retouching ?
I just built them and shot whatever it was...like a scene in a Broadway show or a movie back in the day. Although movies did superimpositions and glass shots.
Who were the guys that we can see on your pictures ?
The choices were not aesthetic...just whoever was willing and available. They were mostly just dragged in off the street...remember this was at the same time there were flower children every where. Street people in the village were not so uptight then. “You want to be in a movie. You may have to be nude? It pays twenty bucks!
The under water scenes were with Jay Garvin who was a male dancer at the 82 Club and he would come by after work...about four in the morning and we would shoot a couple set ups ...and by then it was time for him to get ready for work again. It took that long with no crew ...only Jay and I.
Pink Narcissus has been shot in your New York appartment over a seven-year period, from 1963 to 1970. Tell us why...
Because I had no crew. I did the all photography, direction, costumes, sets, lighting, and makeup....I sometimes had to push the dolly and I often needed to be the fluffer. I even had to make a hair piece for Bobby because he started balding at the front before I finished the film. I did 90% of this film with no help. And in between the times I was shooting the film... I did costume designs and built the costumes for various other projects. I filmed when I had no other employment. Then when the film was near completion...Sherpix invested in it and I was able to work on it full time.
How did Bobby Kendall become one of your muse and the main character of that movie ?
A close friend of mine introduced him to me thinking I might want to photograph him.
Why did you decide to credit it as anonymous ?
The film was taken away from me in the editing room before it was finished being filmed. There were cut-aways that I discovered I needed and I had a few small scenes that Sherpix did not allow me time to film. It was never the film I ran in my head for seven years and I did not approve of how what there was ... was edited. For instance the Times Square scene was filmed A roll B roll C roll D roll so that when it was printed there was Bobby... or a Bobby yesterday, today and tomorrow ...all at the same time. Most of this footage ( mostly of the various street hustlers... who represented nearly every sexual fetish...and the different store vendors) was left out of the film and what they did use was placed incorrectly. These ghost images and Bobby yesterday and the Bobby tomorrow were filmed in slow motion so it was very difficult to do so that none of the ghost images were in the same place at the same time.. The choreorgraphy had to be very exact and every thing was timed with numbered marks on the floor. Anyway... I took my name off it in protest.
2016