CURRENT PROJECT
Pictures That Kill: a 40-year retrospective of Charles Gatewood
3rd October to 24th October 2008
Charles Gatewood is the Mapplethorpe of America's sexual counterculture. Eidos Magazine |
Charles Gatewood has been photographing the cutting edge of transgressive people and subcultures for some 30 years, ranging from piercing and tattooing (he was photographing body art and modification long before anyone had much heard of any such thing) to Margi Gras, gatherings of naturists, and bikers' conventions. His books of mind-stretching photographs ... have established him as the leading photodocumentarian of the modern primitive movement.
David Steinberg in The Spectator
Charles Gatewood the sidetripping photographer takes what the walker didn't quite see, something or somebody he may have looked quickly away from and the photo reminds him of something deja vu back in front of his eyes.
William Burroughs
Gatewood is cool to the point of coldness, disciplined to the point of brutality, and sensitive to the point of perversity in his portrayal of the 'swinging sector' of the American Bourgeoisie, the subject matter of his work. He shows the kind of post-Arbus imagery which in hindsight was both logical and essential following Diane Arbus' death.
The Australian
At a time when the country is moving steadily to the right ... ostentatious violation of moral taboos must have redeeming and defensible artistic merit, as is indeed the case with the controversial photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe and Charles Gatewood.
Camille Paglia in The Advocate
