I am currently loving this image by Robert Mapplethorpe, Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter (1979). Hope that doesn't make me creepy. The juxtaposition between classy living room and rough leather lovin' is genius. Everyone has a living room, regardless of how you like your sex. I enjoy the "Home Sweet Home" someone cheekily attached to the bottom.
An interesting take on the photo from http://sexuality-space.tumblr.com/post/925538175:
"Kenneth E. Silver, in “Master Bedrooms, Master Narratives” argues that these particular images (homokink couples at home) are challenging (to the American ‘public’) because they represent, not the pathology of homosex(uality) but its ‘ardent domestication’: they are attempts to depict “gay conjugal” space. The images reveal certain ‘narrative’ expectations regarding the appropriate locations of queer sex. Certain kinds of sex (homosexual, kinky) are linked to certain kinds of spaces (clubs, dungeons) : can sex be recreational (non-reproductive, playful) and residential?"
The people going to see this in a museum back when it was first shown would have the stereotype of S & M being grimy and grungy, done in dark alleys or something like that. But Mapplethorpe breaks that stereotype and the viewer sees their own living room in Brian and Lyle's living room. The S & M world doesn't seem as distant to these viewers as it did before.
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