Bidgood brought this subtext forward with clear, direct expression, and created his own visual and symbolic language.” Hollywood films were steeped in queer subtext, often courtesy of their closeted creators. Rivera said, “but instead saw himself as driven by the need to create visual evidence of his desire, which originated from being a little boy enraptured by Hollywood musicals. “He didn’t consider himself an artist, per se,” Ms. As a boy, he said, he was drawn to the imagery of the Ziegfeld Follies and similar spectacles, a fascination that years later was reflected in his photographs. James Alan Bidgood was born on March 28, 1933, in Stoughton, Wis., and grew up in the Madison area. He lived a life that was utterly uncompromising and expressive.” “Despite this, Bidgood was never ashamed or closeted. “His work for male physique magazines existed on the edge of legality,” she said. His photographs, she noted, were made at a time when erotic images and gay lifestyles faced substantial legal restrictions. “Since working with Bidgood’s materials,” she said by email, “I’ve understood the deep importance of his work on so many queer people, who have shared with me that they had not seen being gay as beautiful in the same way before seeing James’s work.” In 2001, there were exhibitions of his pictures in Italy, in Provincetown, Mass., and at the Paul Morris gallery in Manhattan. Bidgood’s largely forgotten photography from the 1960s and ’70s was reappraised. The film began turning up at festivals around the country, and Mr. Bidgood’s role became well known, especially after the publication in 1999 of “James Bidgood,” a monograph that included a biography by Bruce Benderson.
Andy Warhol’s name was often suggested, among others.Įventually Mr. For years, as the film gained cachet in the gay world, guessing who had made it was a parlor game. Bidgood’s backers had taken control of the project from him and released a version of the film that he didn’t like, and he had his name removed from the credits. Canby nor the movie’s audiences knew whose work it was Mr.
Vincent Canby, reviewing the movie in The Times when it opened in two Manhattan theaters in May of that year, dismissed it as “a passive, tackily decorated surreal fantasy out of that pre‐Gay‐Activist era when homosexuals hid in closets and read novels about sensitive young men who committed suicide because they could not go on.”īut neither Mr.