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As a new exhibition of previously unseen James Bidgood photographs opens in New York, Miss Rosen reflects on the life of an artist who found solace and sanctuary in the world of make-believe
With his sexy bullfighters and tumescent belly dancers, the late filmmaker pioneered an aesthetic since imitated by everyone from David LaChapelle to Lil Nas X
Bidgood was also famed for his erotic photographs of young men for gay publications.
PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER James Bidgood might agree with a sentiment expressed in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband: To be natural “is such a very difficult pose to keep up.” From 1960 to 1970—the period between the US court decisions affirming the redeeming social value of male physique photographs and subsequent ones establishing a legal definition of pornography—Bidgood constructed an elaborate artificial world for himself. His small, hermetic body of work combines eroticism and a vivid, campy vulgarity. Although artists such as Pierre et Gilles, David LaChapelle, and Steven Arnold ...