Customer Reviews

Bidgood (Photo Book Series)

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James Bidgood was a costumer and photographer in the 1950s. He anonymously directed the classic homoerotic film "Pink Narcissus" in 1971. "Bidgood" is a terrific introduction to the 66-year-old photographer's work. Although some may consider the style of the photos kitschy and campy, Bidgood argues (through his work) that beauty informs style and fashion. These aren't interchangeable twinks in satyr costumes; these photographs harken back to an era when a different gay sensibility ruled. They are reminiscent of Cocteau, Genet and Anger. What Bob Mizer wished he could do, and what Tom Bianchi could never hope to -- this is the work of James Bidgood. The informative and detailed accompanying essays help the reader understand what he's seeing, and place Bidgood's work in a broader artistic, photographic, and cultural context. Excellent!

I really enjoyed this beautiful over-sized photography book. What a work of "Art" in itself, from its pink cover to the beautiful photos inside. James Bidgood is considered the father of the gay pulp and glamour aesthetic. An American photographer in the 50's who transformed his apartment into a fantasy land to photograph these beautiful boys. This book is just crammed with photos of beautiful young men. Included are essays explaining his life and these photographs. Some may consider these photos campy, but they have a beauty and style that was really unique to that period and time. James Bidgood was also the director of the homoerotic film "Pink Narcissus" in the 70's.

This is a definite must for your collection. A very sensual and emotional book of beautiful photographs. Highly recommended.

I found James Bidgood's photo examples of lighting and confined sets an encouragement of what can be done in photography. His work has an emotional "feel" that comes out of the book and fasinates the reader. If you are a photographer of the male body, you'll love this book.

This book is indeed oversized. It's 170 pages or so, but more striking are the dimesions - approx 22" x 8". The pages are silver gilded on each edge, and the binding itself is pink. In fact, this is a typical Taschen book.

This book is a truly luscious confection. The images are outrageously camp and highly stylised. For those of you who know Pierre & Gilles work, this photographer's pictures may seem to be basis for their style, but Bidgood uses real models and makeup rather than airbrush work on the raw prints.

Just looking at the photograph of the Pan-figure on the jacket starts your mouth watering, finally begining to drool as you pass from page to page.

If you can find a shelf on which to fit this book, you MUST buy it. It's simply beyond words. (...)

I caught Bidgood's Pink Narcissus on tape a few years ago and felt as if I'd taken a hallucinogenic drug. Although Benderson's detailed, sensitive essay points it out, nobody seems to have noticed that this work is poetic allegory--symbolic dreamwork. This work is much more than it seems to some on the surface. Benderson noticed it. I hope other readers do.

James Bidgood, here honored by Taschen books u=in a monograph, is an American artist best known for his campy, at times outrageous concoctions of images that feature young men at the focal point. 'His work which was inspired by an early interest in Florenz Ziegfeld, Folies Bergère, and George Quaintance has, in turn, served as important inspiration for a slew of artists including Pierre et Gilles and David LaChapelle. In the late 1950s Bidgood attended Parsons The New School for Design. Bidgood directed the 1971 film Pink Narcissus, a dialogue-free fantasy centered around a young and often naked man. The film took seven years to make, and Bidgood built all the sets and filmed the entire piece in his tiny apartment. He later removed his name from the film because he felt editors had changed his original vision. Consequently, the film bore the word "Anonymous" for the director's credit, and it was misattributed to other directors such as Andy Warhol for many years.' That is the way historians are reporting on his oeuvre.

What fills the pages of this garish but sensational book are his photographs including his initial foray, 'Water Colors' - in which he used a dancer named Jay Garvin as his subject. The underwater atmosphere is completely fabricated; the bottom of the ocean was created with silver lame spread across the floor of Bidgood's apartment; he made the arch of a cave out of waxed paper, and fashioned red lame into the shape of lobster. He coated Garvin with mineral oil and pasted glitter and sequins to his skin so the silver fabric under photographic lights would reflect on his body like water. For weeks at a time, Bigood would eat and sleep within the sets he constructed in his apartment. His other constructed images quote mythology and purely created erotica, camp, performance, illusory identities - all aspects that for the time were unique and to this day are imitated by a number of artists both in photography and in painting. He likely will become more respected as time passes as being one of the instigators of wild performance art. Grady Harp, May 11

Been looking for this book for years ... NOW I OWN IT ... the photography is so colorful and interesting ... If your lucky to find this buy it ..

The reader from San Diego is clearly unaware that much of thework is from the 50s and that almost Everyone [copied] from Bidgood. Hiswork is a milestone in the representation of visual, fantastical and sensual love. END

A truly innovative photographer and an amazing imagination. Pierre et Gilles owe a lot to this seminal mind and vision.

James Bidgood was a bad (if pretentious) filmmaker, and his work fails even as eroticism. Benderson's overwritten (and equally pretentious) critique of his work does nothing to redeem it or make it seem any better than it was. Leave Bidgood's junk in the garbage bin of the seventies where it belongs. He deserves to be forgotten, as does this book.