Fag Noir

Fag Noir is a series that confronts two objectives. The first is to question “the cock,” its widespread censorship around the world, and the modes employed to represent it visually in contemporary art. The second is to test the boarders of our comfort zones, both as photographer and viewer. In Fag Noir I have imagined and executed new realities, all utilizing male genitalia as an object. While not explicitly gesturing at Robert Mapplethorpe, Fag Noir was an attempt to reimagine male sexuality by removing it from the power structures within which it is often confined. Many of Mapplethorpe’s most iconic (and arguably his queerest) works are what many would find to be “graphic” depictions of male and female bodies. Much of this is due to the sexualized nature of his portraiture, but the dark narratives below the images’ surface also fuel this perception. Of most interest to me is Mapplethorpe’s framing of male genitalia, especially in Cock and Gun (1982), where the erect penis and the pistol are juxtaposed as a collusion of tools—one sexual, one violent, or each both. Mapplethorpe has been a lifelong inspiration of mine, and I believe that queer artists continue to bear a responsibility to challenge notions of gender, sexuality, and the tasteful limits of the frame. The narratives in my work thus operate as projections of my sexual subconscious, but more interesting to me is how those with differing relationships to the penis and sexuality will be subconsciously guided in their viewings by hegemonic cultural structures. Though my intention is often humorous and celebratory, my larger goal was to question the confinement of male nudity in our current era, and the impacts of such censorship on our celebration, fear of, or understanding of male sexuality.