Pierre et Gilles

They are photographers that put quotes around each of their subjects. Their style of photography could be compared to a drag queen’s repertoire of makeup tricks. Without the excess, the drawing on of a new persona, there is no queen. But Pierre and Gilles surpass the drag queen aesthetic.

It’s pretty easy to tell that Pierre and Gilles’ photos are about the homoerotic male gaze. The men in the pictures are so artificially prettied and airbrushed that they appear painted. Or better yet, they are so flawlessly and stiffly posed that they appear to be mannequins. The frills, elaborate design, theatrics and intense unrelenting color of the photos have their roots in (what is for many) the gay male experience.

As varieties of homosexual experience are as varied as varieties of heterosexual experience, I am not trying to generalize about all gay men here. But I do think the work of Pierre and Gilles resonates with a certain type of gay experience. I believe the photos reflect that early, pre-adolescent glimmer of knowledge some gay boys get when they realize that they prefer playing with barbies, make-up and lace to monster trucks and hot wheels. There’s a certain exquisite self-consciousness that comes with this insight -- a painful yet pleasurable recognition that one is different. It is this tragic sense of difference, as well as a campy, passive, feminine sensuality (like the heroine of a silent movie who is tied writhing to train tracks) that surfaces in their photographs. Muscular men with shiny, hairless bodies suffer pretty, ecstatic agony in the poses of saints, sailors and sinners.

A kind of femininity that is more feminine than any female appears in many of their photos. It is a femininity of artifice, coyness, make-up and more make-up. In the Pierre and Gilles photos, make up is not equated with a mask. It is the point of each figure. In this surreally pretty world of glitter and glam, there is no face without make up.

Every image is saturated with throbbing colors, especially blood red and lapis blue. Each photograph is situated in an imaginary place -- the mythological land of Greece where harpies rule, the stage sets of Indian and Mexican religious post cards, and sometimes the figures float in and out of blue, sparkling space.

By capitalizing on popular culture’s obsession with the paraphernalia of Mexican , Indian and Ancient Greek religious icons, they turn the focus of the images of saints from divine to earthly love. By doing so, they emphasize how the love of beauty has become a religion. This is not something they criticize; rather, each photo is a celebration of this fact.

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