Fag Noir

• Prize
• Photographer
  Andy Egelhoff Scholarship student of Photography at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City, currently studying in Paris, France
• Studio
  Andy Egelhoff

Fag Noir is a series that confronts two objectives. The first is to
question “the cock,” its widespread censorship around the world,
and the modes employed to represent it visually in contemporary
art. The second is to test the boarders of our comfort zones, both
as photographer and viewer. In Fag Noir I have imagined and
executed new realities, all utilizing male genitalia as an object.
While not explicitly gesturing at Robert Mapplethorpe, Fag Noir
was an attempt to reimagine male sexuality by removing it from
the power structures within which it is often confined. Many of
Mapplethorpe’s most iconic (and arguably his queerest) works are
what many would find to be “graphic” depictions of male and
female bodies. Much of this is due to the sexualized nature of his
portraiture, but the dark narratives below the images’ surface also
fuel this perception. Of most interest to me is Mapplethorpe’s
framing of male genitalia, especially in Cock and Gun (1982),
where the erect penis and the pistol are juxtaposed as a collusion
of tools—one sexual, one violent, or each both. Mapplethorpe has
been a lifelong inspiration of mine, and I believe that queer artists
continue to bear a responsibility to challenge notions of gender,
sexuality, and the tasteful limits of the frame. The narratives in my
work thus operate as projections of my sexual subconscious, but
more interesting to me is how those with differing relationships to
the penis and sexuality will be subconsciously guided in their
viewings by hegemonic cultural structures. Though my intention is
often humorous and celebratory, my larger goal was to question
the confinement of male nudity in our current era, and the impacts
of such censorship on our celebration, fear of, or understanding of
male sexuality.