Marins, around 1977
Six years before Courbet combs the origin of the world, a photographer immortalizes the lower abdomen… of a man. Saved from destruction, this rare image is one treasure of the Au Bonheur du jour gallery in Paris.
Antique dealer specializing in male curiosities, Nicole Canet devotes until June 29 an exhibition of clandestine homoerotic photographs 1860–1930, entitled “Happy pranks” and which brings together no less than 164 clandestine photographs, including two very narrow stereoscopies, a naked man, thighs offered. In the Exhibition's Catalog, all these photos are reproduced in large format, accompanied by scholarly information and delicious comments: “Secret furniture, double funds drawers, discreet wallets, generations of the past did not lack ideas to conceal Erotic images that are the object At all times, fantasies without number Let us rejoice that not all are doomed to destruction by prudent minds that do not prevail during the successions. wanted to make an anthology, largely unpublished, present the different facets of male eroticism in what is stronger and more daring.
«Gars louches aux manières mal équarries» / (Shady guys with badly squared ways)
The book presents these precious documents in chronological order. It begins with the Origin of the World (male version), which dates back to the time when Verlaine, 16, discovered the gallant paintings of Watteau and Boucher. A few years later, in 1871, Verlaine fell in love with Rimbaud:
“Get on me like a woman,”
he writes. In 1873, he killed his lover, which earned him two years in prison. In the meantime, what’s going on? Homoerotic photographs are multiplying, thanks to this tolerance, which is proliferating in Paris brothels for men and in shady places frequented by sailors or soldiers. Photographers recruit their models from the bad guys and sell them under the cloak. It is often difficult to know who does what. “For fear of seizure of their production, with the possibility of arrest and imprisonment, the photographers did not sign their photos, and the models were careful not to reveal their identity.”
«Cuisses, âmes, mains, tout mon être pêle-mêle» / (Thighs, souls, hands, my whole being pell-mell,) (Verlaine)
Although the photos are anonymous, Nicole Canet draws them. There are those of Vincenzo Galdi, for example, who — just like the painter Caravaggio, three centuries ago — will find his models in the streets of Rome and offer them to go home, for sessions sometimes overlapping. Nicole Canet also identifies some models, which she follows literally throughout her career: there is this Italian ephebe called “the snake” because his penis is (obviously) 27 centimeters (10,9 inches). From page to page, we find him in positions more and more daring, up to self-blowjob, through “hugs like a kiss”. There is also this muse-like teenager, dressed in a corset and feminine lingerie, crowned with laurel on images dating back to 1895, where other entangled patterns fade away. In 1895, Verlaine wrote the preface to the Complete Poems of Rimbaud to pay homage to his lost lover. A few months later, he died in his turn.
Des «ébats sous forme de querelles» / (“sensual game in the form of quarrel”)
But the photographers themselves continue to work. Because the demand is strong in the prohibited clichés. Among the finds of Nicole Canet, there are kama-sutra (males) of the beautiful era sold under the title “Moderne Enculeurs” (Modern Sodomizer), inspired by the famous Verrou De Fragonard. “The door, the keyhole, the peephole, the lock excite the imagination,” said Nicole, also enthusiastic about the raw sex scenes, dating back to 1920, between two male employees of the brothel Aux Belles Poules — 32 rue Blondel -, perhaps attended by Proust (who knows?) and silver prints of the 1930s, populated by virile boys at the Querelle de Brest. The illicit dominates.
“I have always loved the strong sex that I find legitimate to call the fair sex. My misfortunes came from a society that condemns the rare crime and forces us to reform our inclinations “ Wrote Coctau in his White paper; 1928.
He does not dare to sign the book of his name “because the time is not there… not yet… not yet…”, as well as stated Nicole Canet. And so much the better, she seems to say: the forbidden pictures give off something disturbing.
