Gay Pride and Self-Representation Under the Lavender Scare

Theodore Newman, “Peter and Two Pauls in Rhode Island” (1957), gelatin silver photo 

View Post

The World’s First Cross-Dressing Superhero

Edie Fake, “Killer Dyke” (2012), ballpoint pen, ink, and gouache on paper, 17 x 14 inches (via Homage to a City’s Queer History)

Gays, Grinder, The Holocaust Memorial, and Art: An Interview with Marc Adelman

BERKELEY, California — Marc Adelman’s project, “Stelen (Columns)” has stayed on my mind since I first heard of it early this year. The work is a collection of over 100 images of men posing at Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Germany that Adelman culled from various gay dating websites. The work is controversial in that the subjects’ self portraits have, unbeknownst to them, been used as an art project which eventually made it’s way into New York’s Jewish Museum, where it garnered national attention. One of the subjects included in the show, Tim Rooks, threatened legal action against Adelman, and the work was eventually taken down from display.

Was the removal of the work censorship on the part of The Jewish Museum? Did Adelman have the right to use the images? Why were there so many men using this site as a backdrop? Was it callousness or something more? Although some time has passed, I reached out to Adelman via email to try and understand more about the project. Unfortunately for legal reasons Adelman couldn’t answer many of my questions regarding the lawsuit directly, but he does shed some much needed light on the project as a whole.

“Kgomotso and his three days date” (2008) (courtesy of Michael Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa) (via Small Town Gay Community)

Ukrainian Catholic Church Declares Taras Polataiko’s Sleeping Beauty Project “Lesbian Propaganda”

Fairytales are make-believe until a country’s Catholic Church decides to protest them.

Gay Sex, Art and Nostalgia on the New York Waterfront

Gay Life Portrayed in Traditional Chinese Paper-cuts

LOS ANGELES — Being different is never easy, more so when you live in an infamously restrictive and conservative Communist Chinese society. Born in a farming village of the Shaanxi province, Xiyadie (a nom de plume meaning “Butterfuly in Siberia”) turns traditional paper-cut art into colorful, risqué pieces dealing with gay love and life.