Part I
The Invisible Closet:
on Coming Out as a Photographer
Interview by Philip Vincent
This interview was briefly quoted in OBLIVION
Vol. 2, Issue 2 (San Francisco, May-June 1996) p. 14.
In May 1978, Biron relocated to San Francisco
from Ann Arbor, Michigan where in the early '70s he had Come Out, dropped
out of a Ph. D. program at the University of Michigan while working on dissertation
on Dada ant Tristan Tzara, and focused his energy on various projects and
activities within Ann Arbor's politically active Gay community.
His interest in Xerox art in the late '60s, eventually
led to his involvement in a series of conceptual and mail art projects in
the '70s, activities which he continued in San Francisco, but which he abandoned
along with photography in late 1979 after the murder of Robert Opel, a friend
and collaborator.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR NEW BOOK.
L.B. It's called MIKE
TADZIO OF THE NINETIES and
was recently published by Janssen Verlag in Berlin as a hard-cover edition.
It features an extraordinarily beautiful young man from Pacifica in 64 color
photographs taken from four rolls of film I shot last year in my lower Haight
studio.
You may recall that Tadzio is an ethereal
god-like presence a golden boy in Thomas Mann's 1911 novella,
DEATH IN VENICE. I'm proud to be associated with such a masterpiece especially
in a book published in Germany.
I really admire Mann's work which clearly
positions homosexuality at the historical center of Western culture and
I hope the images reflect it. At the end of the story, Mann mentions a camera
set on a tripod facing the ocean in the direction of Tadzio. I imagine that
I used that camera when I took the photos of Tadzio's for this book.
DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH ACHENBACH, THE PROTAGONIST
IN "DEATH IN VENICE"?
LB: At my age that's a reasonable question, but truthfully I can say no,
I don't. However, I do relate to some of the issues presented by Mann each
time I photograph beauty at its peak whether its a beautiful man or a beautiful
flower which I often combine in a photograph. It's all about Carpe diem.
That wise admonition to pluck the day has absolutely nothing to do with
retirement plans [laughs].
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A PHOTOGRAPHER?
LB: Well, I've been taking pictures for over 40 years, but it's only recently
that I've come out as a photographer. I remember, in 1961, when I was an
undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire, I entered a photography
contest and unexpectedly picked up both the first and fourth prizes for
two color slides. I didn't show any of my photographs after that until four
years ago when I contacted Richard Labonte at A DIFFERENT LIGHT and told
him that I had made a series of 11"x14" color prints of the 1989
San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade which he nicely let me exhibit
at the book store.
WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID YOU
CAME OUT AS A PHOTOGRAPHER?
LB: Looking back, I now realize that I could have taken my photography more
seriously after I won those prizes 30 years ago. But what influenced me
at the time, and stuck in my mind was a frat brother's reaction.
Although he never came right out and said
it, he let me know that I really had no business taking the results of the
contest seriously because I had no formal background in photography: I hadn't
taken any courses in photography as he had, nor did I know the first thing
about developing my own pictures as he did.
In short, I never questioned his assessment
and took my winning the contest simply as a fluke. It was just like my being
a Gay 'wanabe.' You know, I wanted-to-be Gay but I didn't see my gayness
clearly enough to even acknowledge its presence. Repression relieved me
of the responsibility of making any conscious decision about my gayness
like living in an invisible closet. Similarly, I caved in to peer pressure
and repressed my photography. So for me photography is all vaguely linked
to gayness and a life-long process of Coming Out.
WHAT ARE YOUR PICTURES ABOUT?
LB: Pride and Acceptance. Pride as reflected
in the attitude of each of my models and acceptance from the public I seek.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE?
LB: Three years ago I wanted my style
to be transparent so as to be invisible. I wanted to let the subject matter
speak directly to the viewer without any particular style interfering. I
had a sort of Warhol attitude.
At least that was the intention. I've
never liked the fact that people get off identifying the artist when they
see a work of art. I could never figure out what the pleasure was in spotting
the style of particular painter or photographer? "Oh! there's a Georgia
O'Keeffe!," "There's a Maplethorpe!" That sort of thing is
neither difficult nor significant; yet, I suppose recognition like
a brand name sells because people are insecure in their tastes.
Style is ego, an afterthought, a conclusion
the stuff critics depend upon. Now, when I look back on my work the past
few years, I realize that in spite of the my initial intention to downplay
it, to subordinate it to the visual content, style simply imposes itself
whatever one may think of it. My photos are as easily identifiable as anyone
else's, but it's something I'm not particularly proud of. I see it a reflection
of my limitation as a photographer.
IF STYLE ISN'T IMPORTANT, WHAT IS?
LB: What matters is the quality of the
individual work. Nothing else. Energy is immediate and transformational.
And in that respect, there's no difference between art and any other human
expression. If one gets too self-conscious, it's all over. For example,
compare Miró's works through the early 1950s with his later oversized
made-for-the-mantelpiece prints.
WHAT ABOUT PORNOGRAPHY?
LB: Photographers can get into an artsy
posing mode and use beautiful models to do nude photography because they
want to distance themselves from pornography. As in real life, people are
neither as interested nor as tolerant when confronted with the naked bodies
of ordinary looking people, as they are when faced with drop-dead gorgeous
people.
In other words, beautiful people seem
to get away with things others can't, even in photography. The double standard
for beauty is deeply rooted in Western culture and goes back to the ancient
Greeks.
Then there's the more important issue
of censorship surrounding the last great sexual taboo the showing of the
erect male cock. I began to realize that "tasteful nudes" were
often little else than rationalized self-censorship.
Why should a photo with a hard cock by
definition be considered tasteless? Conventional morality must not dictate
aesthetics. I want to integrate the cock into my photography.
That's why I recently did an issue of
GRUF [Great Unshaven Faces], which unashamedly deals with pornographic imagery.
It allowed me to combine traditional porn shots with sexually neutral nude
shots. This, in turn, led me to"erotic portraits" that attempt
to introduce the hard-on into the photo without it overpowering other elements
of the image.
I believe sexually charged imagery can
be more varied and interesting than we are used to seeing. We're conditioned
to seeing porno in a very limited way. I think the potential of porno is
very rich and has only barely been tapped.
WHO MAKES UP YOUR AUDIENCE?
LB: I'm not exactly sure. I've discovered,
much to my surprise, that many of my photos have great appeal to straight
women. I have a client who is a Midwestern novelist. And then there are
the young gay men that seem to relate best with what I am doing and provide
me with most of my models. I'd like to photograph older men, but I find
few of them are open to it for all kind of reasons.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF YOUR EARLY
PHOTOGRAPHY?
LB: A triptych comes to mind taken in
the mid 1950's. One shows my mother and father seated in lawn chairs in
our back yard in New Hampshire; there's another with just my mother; and
a third of me which my mother shot under my supervision so I'll claim it
as my own unless she objects. For me, these three photos evoke the 1950's,
in a minimalist way. Definitely a past world a past consciousness
yet it was once me and my world which I'm now resurrecting with the
help of my computer and Photoshop.
Then there are a number of formal architectural
and textural shots that preoccupied me in the 1960s: railings, walls, buildings
that sort of thing. It's taken me a very long time to photograph people
as I now do.
HOW MANY PICTURES HAVE YOU TAKEN?
LB: If you mean throughout my life, I
really don't know, but there aren't that many. And I certainly haven't taken
myself seriously enough to catalog the stuff. However, I'm a natural collector
so I've kept every picture I've ever taken, perhaps four or five thousand
in all. Many are slides form the 50's and 60's others are b/w prints taken
with my Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera. Have you ever seen one? A square black
box that took square pictures and were printed with a white border.
HOW DOES YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY RELATE TO
YOUR XEROX ART AND MAIL ART?
LB: I first played with Xeroxes in the
'60s and Mail Art in the '70s and used both Xeroxes and 8"x10"
color prints to document my mail art. Sometimes I made Xeroxes of color
prints. Teddy, who worked with Gronk in L.A., and Jerry Dreva, in South
Milwaukee, with whom I often collaborated, did much the same. Prints were
too expensive and difficult to mail; so, we made photocopies that could
be easily folded. These old color Xeroxes were great: '60s and '70s pre-grunge.
The colors were quite garish with ink surfaces raised high enough for a
blind person to read.
WHEN DID YOU START DOING XEROX ART?
LB: I first started working with photocopiers
when I had deadlines to meet for my term papers when I was in grad school
in 1964-65: I'd cut and paste the paper then get a clean photocopy if you
whited-out the edges of the paste ups and adjusted the copiers contrast
properly. This allowed for last minute editing. So was life before the personal
computer.
It really wasn't until 1967-68 that I started playing and experimenting
with b/w photocopiers and then color photocopiers. I was at the time I was
producing French television programs for advanced language students under
an Experimentation Fund Grant while teaching at Drake University in Des
Moines. There wasn't much to do in Des Moines, but they had this brand new
TV studio donated by Cowles Publications, headquartered in Des Moines, and
this wonderful copier in the basement of Drake's Administrative Building
where I spent a lot of time. This playing around with cut and paste collages
opened the door to mail art, much like my Dada research in Europe led me
to conceptual art in 1973-74.
WERE MANY PEOPLE DOING XEROX ART IN THE `60s?
LB: I really don't know. I'm no historian
on the subject. All I know is that when I first got started with photocopiers,
they were used almost exclusively for text to copy business letters
and annual reports. Anyone using these copy machines for graphics had to
be playing; that is, making art. Photocopiers weren't at all accepted for
graphics until Xerox produced this clear plastic sheet covered with a grid
of tiny black dots that could be placed directly under the image. The dots
broke down the white areas and produced results similar to the old photographs
in newspapers before computer imaging took over. From an art point of view,
I feel nostalgic for this period when technology just wasn't slick enough
to interest business, however much it tried. With these early copiers grunge
was a fact, not a special effect.
WAS XEROX ART POLITICAL?
LB: For me it was. My experience with
photocopiers proved very useful when I began publishing a weekly newsletter
and some flyers for Ann Arbor's Gay Community Services: one flyer which
had a calendar of events printed over a full-face close-up of a cute young
Caucasian boy whose hair I highlighted with a neon yellow Magic Marker.
Our attendance shot up, but I got some political flack for that one. I collaborated
with a graphic artist (whose name I've unfortunately forgotten) who did
a pencil drawing of Allen Ginsberg, for a photocopy limited edition of poster
we created to publicize a fund raising reception for the Gay Community Services'
Center which Ginsberg signed at the event.
WHAT'S THE CONNECTION WITH "NEO-DADA"
AND MAIL ART?
LB: To infiltrate and destroy the conventional
art structures was a tactic often used by the early Dadaists. For example,
Tristan Tzara's Dada newsprint magazine, published in Zurich from 1917 to
1919, advertised a deluxe limited edition on its back page. So it was not
in the least original when mail artists mimicked limited edition prints
by using photocopiers to create all kinds of signed, numbered multiples.
I once copied the format from an issue
of S. HITchcock's mail artzine CABARET VOLTAIRE the Blue Star Edition
of 500 published in San Diego which used a quarter page format: 4
1/4"x5." Many Xeroxes we exchanged were produced in numbered signed
editions. Lists were kept of the recipients of these Xeroxes with the edition
number they were sent. It was a way of ridiculing the Capitalist art market
by creating limited editions and then giving them away. If it's free, it
can't be worth anything. Right!
WHAT ARE PHOTOCOPIERS LIKE TODAY?
LB: They're great. My current favorite
is the Kodak 1575 probably the best on the market for black & white
images. The machine is so sophisticated that it has separate settings for
glossies and newsprint. It also has great manual and auto blow-up capabilities.
I sometimes find the black & white result superior to the original color
prints.
Color can be distracting, so removing
it can intensify a mood. If you're into special effects, you can also play
around with second generation images which are far superior to any first
generation images produced 30 years ago.
Now, I scan my negatives into my computer,
transform the images in Photoshop, and print them out on an ink-jet printer.
The color output from Epson's Stylus Color II with 720 dpi is really amazing
for under $300 and if you need an 11"x17" blow-up of an ink-jet
, you do it on a Canon color copier.
WHAT FIRST INTERESTED YOU IN XEROX ART?
LB: Photocopying is not as elitist an
art medium as photography. Although the machines are expensive, the copies
themselves cost relatively little. It doesn't take equipment, photo labs,
oil paints. All you need is some paper, ingenuity, and a concept. Like writing,
it's a very democratic medium. Most of the Xeroxes are given away or exchanged
rather than sold. I've know few artists who have made any money doing these
things. Gronk is the exception. So it's done because it's fun. What's interesting
doesn't necessarily pay off in conventional ways.
END OF PART I
Part I: The Invisible Closet: on Coming
Out as a Photographer
Lionel A. Baron 1996 © All
Rights Reserved.
Part II: The 1970s Revisited: Biron on Robert Opel, Camille
O'Grady, Jerry Dreva, Robert Maplethorpe, Gronk, Teddy, Jorge Caraballo,
Clemente Padin, Guiglielmo Achille Cavallini, and others.
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