Arthur Tress: Photographing Desire Before Stonewall

Before liberation had found its language, Arthur Tress was photographing hidden queer worlds in New York City.Born in 1940, Tress is regarded as one of the masters of modern American photography, his work held in many of the major museum collections in the United States. His photographs trace seismic shifts in social history while exploring desire, sexuality and the complexities of human encounter, alongside an extraordinary body of ethnographic work.In this special extended episode of The BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast, Graeme Smith speaks with the legendary 85-year-old photographer about a life spent documenting dream imagery, underground culture and social change.Best known for work moving between documentary, surrealism and homoerotic fantasy, Tress reflects on photographing men in The Ramble in 1969, the subject of his extraordinary new book The Ramble, published by Stanley Barker.The conversation ranges from cruising culture before Stonewall, Coney Island ruins and ethnographic travels, to 1980s New York, Robert Mapplethorpe, queer visual history, masculinity, fantasy and the underground worlds that shaped modern queer photography.A rare long-form conversation with one of the great, if still too little-known, figures in American photography.Brought to you by BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! boysboysboys.org @boysfineart@boysgallerycafelondon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.