PHOTOGRAPHY VS. PORNOGRAPHY. VOL. VII: Magic (Of) SEX Magick Episode 3 (part 1/2)

EPISODE THREE: Sex, Sacred Power and the Dangerous Seduction of the Ritual

Erotic photography has never existed comfortably inside the categories invented for it. Art, pornography, documentation, fantasy, commerce, autobiography, fetish and private memory have always leaked into one another, particularly when the people behind the camera were themselves living outside the respectable boundaries of their time.

1. Boudoir (2015), photograph from the series Beautiful Boy by artist Lissa Rivera Courtesy of the artist and Museum of Sex NY

2/3 Transgender American model, singer, and performance artist Amanda Lepore Facebook page / Body Parts (1977–80), Penis The Love series of Andy Warhol silkscreen prints via Saatchi Art  

Nowhere is this more apparent than in queer visual culture, where the erotic image has frequently had to perform several jobs at once: record a body that official culture preferred not to see, preserve an intimacy that could not safely be acknowledged, create a fantasy world in which different rules applied, and sometimes simply provide evidence that a particular life had existed. 

4-6 Andy Warhol, Sex Parts (FS II.172-177) complete portfolio of 6 screen prints on HMP paper, 1978 via Guy Hepner Gallery / WHATEVER PARTY / Instant Doll Domination at the @bcallabcalla show #JosefJasso Photography — LA based artist

The queer photographic archive survives in zines and club photographs, in Polaroid diaries and homemade magazines, in leather publications, contact sheets, underground films, snapshots of lovers and photographs whose original purpose may have been nothing more complicated than desire.

Much of it was never intended for a museum. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, these fragments have become an alternative history of twentieth-century sexuality: unofficial, intimate and frequently much more interesting than the sanitised version.  

7/8  Torso, 1977 Unique screenprint, on Lenox Museum board © The Andy Warhol  Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Andy Warhol Sex Parts (1978) via MutualArt

So, what happens when the erotic image is not merely a representation of sexuality but begins to operate as a kind of ritual object? The connection between queer eroticism, occultism and alternative spirituality has a surprisingly long cultural history. 

For people whose bodies and desires were condemned by conventional religious and social institutions, the occult could provide a language in which the very things described as sinful or deviant might be reconsidered as sources of knowledge, transformation and power.

 9. Andy Warhol, Torsos, 1977 Print © Andy Warhol

This did not mean that every queer artist was an occultist, nor that occult culture was somehow inherently progressive; the historical reality is considerably messier.

But both worlds developed an appetite for symbolism, transformation, theatricality and the deliberate crossing of boundaries, and those similarities created some extraordinary cultural hybrids.

 10/11  #JosefJassoPhotography via Facebook / Josef Jasso Photography, 2022

Hollywood, Magick and the Queer Underground

Los Angeles was one of the places where these worlds collided. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Los Angeles developed a peculiar ecosystem of artists, filmmakers, occultists, writers, performers and assorted beautiful misfits who inhabited the territory between mainstream culture and its shadow.

12/13 David Giampiccolo • @davidgiampiccolo BROKENHEART Clothing LOS ANGELES RESVRRECTVRIS Photo@dylanperlot on Instagram / David Giampiccolo • BROKENHEART Clothing LOS ANGELES RESVRRECTVRIS Photo@dylanperlot

The Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis was part of this strange landscape, as were science-fiction circles, avant-garde theatre and the wider bohemian culture that gathered around Hollywood's dream factory.

It is tempting, from the perspective of the twenty-first century, to turn this into a neat story about a secret queer underground waiting patiently for liberation. History is rarely so obliging. 

14/15 Josef Jasso Fashion Photography@ AMANDALEPORE / #JosefJassoPhotography —@stay.gold.jay

These communities were contradictory, sometimes elitist, sometimes eccentric, sometimes genuinely liberating and sometimes simply populated by people who wanted somewhere else to go after the respectable world had closed its doors.

16/17 James Bidgood, Biker, ca. early 1960s Digital C-print from the production of Bidgood's underground independent cult film Pink Narcissus (released in 1971) / James Bidgood, Curtain Billowing over Bobby Kendall, 1960s Digital C-print

Nevertheless, they offered an alternative vocabulary for the body. In occult thought, gender could become archetype, sexuality could become symbolic energy and identity could be understood as something capable of transformation.

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