James Bidgood

Winter Street Scene

1960s/2022

One of the quintessential creators of homoerotic imagery, filmmaker and photographer James Bidgood produces unique and instantly recognizable works infused with a vividly colorful sense of fantasy and theatricality. Drawing on his background as a dressmaker, costume designer, and drag performer, Bidgood conjures the exotic world of his photographs from scratch, creating works with a heightened artificiality and high camp sensibility. In Bidgood’s photographs, naked or scantily clad young men, often covered in a glistening sheen of Vaseline, pose in lurid landscapes of the imagination while draped over beds or in fields of flowers and dressed as glittering matadors or pointy-eared fauns. Combining vibrant colors, dramatic lighting, and baroque sets, his photographs bring to life a feverish, dreamlike fantasy world one step removed from reality. He has become a major influence on figures such as David LaChapelle and Pierre et Gilles. Estate represented by CLAMP in New York City.