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Creative Studio & Reference Library
Repository of memory, culture, and experience.
Curated Archive via @mattactually
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The first American to argue publicly that photography belonged among the fine arts, F. Holland Day (1864–1933) was a photographer, publisher, collector, and provocateur whose prominence at the turn of the century rivalled that of Alfred Stieglitz. He worked exclusively in platinum, drawn to its extraordinary detail and long, subtle tonal range, and often made only a single print from a negative. His subjects—religious tableaux, Orientalist studies, and male nudes drawn from Greco-Roman models—were controversial in his lifetime and remain central to the debate around his work today.

He asked: “And if it chance that [a] picture is beautiful, by what name shall we call it? Shall we say that it is not a work of art, because our vocabulary calls it a photograph?”
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

A prominent Swedish painter, Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (1884-1965), known as GAN, fostered the development of modernist art in his native country. Regarding his sexuality as a fundamental component of his creativity, he frequently incorporated homoerotic elements into his pictorial compositions, especially in works of the 1910s and 1920s.

In 1918, GAN mounted a full exhibition called ‘Sjömanskompositioner’ (Sailor Compositions) in Stockholm. The exhibition was dedicated to his new partner, Edvin Andersson who was a sailor in the Swedish army. GAN’s wholly original mix of Cubist and Futurist styles was not well received by art critics or the public. Most critics deemed his work too ‘chaotic’, while others condemned his homoerotic subject matter. In that time, homosexuality was illegal and taboo in Sweden, leading to GAN and his work being ostracized by the Swedish public and art scene.

Only in the past few decades has GAN’s art been appreciated for its impact on Swedish modernism. He is now considered one of the most important pioneers of Swedish modern art. He also boldly stood at the forefront of queer visual expression, publicly exhibiting his art in defiance of homophobia.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Whether capturing the diversity of the LGBTQ community, the panoramic geometries of Los Angeles freeways, or the abstract beauty of ice-fishing houses in rural Minnesota, Catherine Opie’s photographs constitute a rich portrait of contemporary America. Opie (@csopie) first gained attention in the early 1990s for her photographs of transgender women and men, drag queens, “leather dykes,” and others who fall outside traditionally assigned gender roles. With their formal composition and vivid, monochromatic backdrops, these images of sexual subcultures use art-historical tropes of photographic and painterly portraiture to cast light on communities unexamined by mainstream America.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Soufiane Ababri (@soufianeababri) lives and works between Paris, France, and Tangier, Morocco. Ababri’s drawings and performances refer to real and fictitious encounters, illustrating a diverse knowledge of film, music, and history with references to the canon of Western gay subculture, the literary world and the art world. His hybrid identity as a gay Arab man allows for a unique and rarely considered perspective: he draws on both Western and non-Western experiences while empathizing with, expressing, and eroticizing the gaze of minority groups.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Curated by Hilton Als and organized in collaboration with the Estate of Alice Neel, “At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World” highlights the artist’s vibrant involvement with the human condition. Within a lifetime of work, Neel painted many people from many walks of life––this catalogue is the first to focus on queer communities, those who were part of their circle, as well as allies and others with whom the artist was in broader conversation—together forming a collective portrait that both embodies and complicates an understanding of the queer world of Neel’s moment and the artist’s place within it.

This collection of paintings includes rarely seen works depicting individuals including Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Adrienne Rich, as well as writers, artists, friends, and advocates. As Als notes, this book includes “not just portraits of gay people but those of theorists, activists, politicians, and so on who would qualify as queer by virtue of their different take in their given field and thus the world. So doing, they reflect Alice’s own interest in and commitment to difference.”
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

The covers of さぶ / SABU from 1991 feel like quiet acts of courage. Bold, intimate, and unapologetically sensual, they exist at the intersection of art, identity, and underground publishing. Created by Ben Kimura, these images are not just magazine covers. They are historical markers. At a time when queer representation was still largely hidden or coded, SABU offered visibility. Not diluted, not softened, but fully formed.

Ben Kimura (1947-2003) was the “face” of Japanese gay magazines from the early 1970s through 2002. He provided the covers and story illustrations for virtually all the issues of Barazoku and Sabu magazines during that time. Kimura’s style is unique among contemporary Japanese homoerotic artists. The bodies are idealized yet alluringly masculine. The faces are boyish yet with realistic expressions; petulant, moody, brooding, soulful, or pouty yet always sensuous.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Comic artist Gengoroh Tagame is a legend of Japanese manga, known for his homoerotic themes. Internationally celebrated for his groundbreaking depictions of gay BDSM eroticism, Tagame has published more than 20 graphic novels—which have been translated into English, French, Italian, and Korean—and his artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. His highly acclaimed comic series ‘My Brother’s Husband’ received a Japan Media Arts Award for Outstanding Work of Manga, the Japan Cartoonists Association Award, and the Eisner Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Known as the “Tom of Finland of Japan,” Tagame was the founding editor and art director of G-Men, a Japanese gay magazine that centered on bear culture in gay male communities.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

In the late 1940s, the artist Tsuyoshi Yoshida would find himself a part of the nascent gay culture of Post-War Japan immersing himself in the nightclubs, cruising boxes (hattenba), saunas, and gyms of Tokyo. He would assume his pseudonym “Go Mishima” after his friend, the infamous poet and political figure Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), who he had met through the bodybuilding community in Tokyo. Mishima had encouraged Yoshida to pursue his erotic illustrations depicting traditionally masculine Japanese men, in line with Mishima’s unique traditionalist-nationalistic views.

A key figure in the earliest gay centered publications in Japan in the 1970s, Go Mishima’s artwork filled the early issues of Barazoku and eventually Sabu, both publications becoming pioneers in gay male aesthetics in Japan. Yoshida, and his contemporaries Go Hirano and Sadao Hasegawa, came to define the aesthetic of Japanese homoerotic art and future gay manga, by depicting masculine figures with thick body hair, toned musculature and cropped haircuts. Yoshida in particular focused on yakuza-styled figures, often with irezumi tattoos and wearing traditional fundoshi underwear.

Go Mishima’s 1972 portfolio, “Book of Pictures of Young Men” available via @vallotauctioneers.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Over the past seven decades, Santa Monica–based artist Don Bachardy (@don_bachardy_artist) has created thousands of visceral, compelling portraits from life. Many of these poignant renderings are of British-American writer Christopher Isherwood, the openly gay icon who was Bachardy’s longtime partner. Other subjects include such famous figures as Bette Davis, W. H. Auden, James Baldwin, and David Hockney.

Bachardy began drawing idealized portraits of celebrities from movie magazines. That all changed when Isherwood offered to be his first live sitter. The resulting portrait was far from flattering, but it was truthful, wrinkles and all, capturing Isherwood’s aura. Bachardy was hooked. From that moment on, he would only do live portraits.

It’s estimated that Bachardy has created over 17,000 portraits to date. Each subject sat for hours for Bachardy’s laser-focused eyes. The unparalleled ocean views, paired with the sitter’s vulnerability and exhaustion, evoke an almost spiritual experience that reveals their likeness and their soul. Bachardy often asks the sitter to cosign the portrait as his collaborator. @thehuntingtonlibrary
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

In his work, Ataru Sato (@ataru_sato) shows the dualities of life by deeply questioning his own soul and his interactions with the world around him. Life, sex and happiness, but also death, decay and sadness are simultaneously present in his work. His intriguing and expressive use of pencil lines and colour reflects these introspective fascinations and obsessions. What does it mean to understand others? Can we survive without being connected with others? Driven by these questions, the work results in a highly erotic, almost psychedelic world where personal fears, loves and intimacies are depicted.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Stanley Stellar (@stellar.stanley), is celebrated for his intimate observations of queer life. Documenting life on the street and in his studio in New York City, Stellar’s photographs acutely define the beauty, fear, and love of the LGBT community following the Stonewall riots of 1969 and through the Gay Liberation movement. Archiving the Christopher Street Piers in the West Village, the first Gay Pride Parades, couples facing the unfathomable realities of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, or even New York’s Mr. Leather competition, Stellar’s lens has maintained its focus for five decades.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives

Michael Leonard (1933-2023) is one of those artists, acclaimed, well-known yet not famous and somehow mysterious. His name will ring a bell with some people while others will be familiar with his most famous works without knowing who they are by. Many, of course, will know exactly who he is and will be big fans of his work.

The nude, particularly the male nude, has been a recurring theme in his work. From the 1970s until 2009, Michael repeatedly returned to this theme. Figures are usually on the move or in a state of transition but even when they are at rest, dynamism is provided by the design of the picture. Almost all of his paintings of the nude are based on drawings which, besides being preparatory studies, are ends in themselves. Over a forty-year period, Michael created a truly remarkable collection of pictures in pencil and in paint; pictures of great tenderness and subtlety, which celebrate the human form in all its complexity and with a mastery of technique that is second to none.

“I am fascinated by the subtle interactions of muscle, bone and sinew that come into play as a body moves. A half turn, a shift of balance, sometimes just an intention to move can animate an entire figure…The ordinary actions of every day present endless pictorial potential. Quite unconsciously, a man makes wonderful shapes in the course of pulling on a T-shirt, stepping into a pair of trousers or towelling himself dry after bathing. These shapes often suggest the urgency of sport or the measured grace of dance and every now and again, bring to mind the posture of a memorable figure from a great work of art. With these references in mind, even the most routine activity acquires resonance.” - Michael Leonard.
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An active archive — resisting forgetting, reclaiming history, and reinventing identity. The blurring of art, life, culture, & documentation. #onlinegallery #artcurator #artarchive #arthistory #creativedirector moodboard pdx library by @ambulatory.archives