| Mr. September is a series of polaroid double portraits that trouble and invert standard models of gaze theory. In the background, a male pin-up poses pulling off a glove with his teeth in a clearly coded homoerotic gesture. This is echoed by my own fore-grounded gesture performed with fingerless gloves, equally legible as homoerotic, though its specific lesbian content is complicated by the contextual beefcake. Underscoring the sloppiness of desire, this series can be read concurrently as an expression of lust, an indication of trans-gender identification, a camp parody of overtly sexual gay masculinity [getting the glove off] a repudiation of lesbian invisibility, or an appropriation of the image of sexually aggressive gay masculinity. These polaroids further signify an experiment to fulfill the complicated desire of encouraging a non-oppressive gaze that is compelling precisely because of the dynamic power exchange it facilitates.
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