The Photograph: Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev in La Bayadère, Palais Garnier 1974.
Image by André Chino.

The image shows Rudolf Nureyev, the dancer, the lover, the bon viveur: A lone bright figure on a dark Paris stage, his costume as radiant as his face. The performance that night is La Bayadère, Marius Petipa's romantic and exotic classic. 

Having only recently discovered the vast and omnifarious world of ballet for myself - don't worry, I'd rather watch than try the steps myself - I am drawn into the tales behind the perfect little pliés. And, oh my, is the name Rudolf Nureyev rich with stories. Take this image: It's one of those blissful moments in which life imitates (or should I say: is preceded by) art.

Nureyev certainly was the shining figure he presents in the picture. In his androgyny and intensity he quickly became a blazing star once he had escaped the bonds of the Soviet Union. Julie Kavanagh and Joan Acocella describe in detail how he, in his love for tights and self-presentation, set new standards for male ballet dancing.

But there's more to this image than, well, a pretty confident guy in dazzling white tights on a black stage. I was thrilled to learn that the scene depicted is La Bayadère's The Kingdom of the Shades, an opium-driven, hypnotic hallucination of a ballet. Arlene Croce of The New Yorker once outlined its substance beautifully:

"The subject of the Kingdom of the Shades is not really death, although everyone in it except for the hero is dead. It's Elysian bliss, and its subject is eternity ... [it is] a poem about dancing and memory and time."

The scene's theme echoes hauntingly in Nureyevs life. If his life, his world weren't created by hallucinatory drugs, they certainly were shaped by excess, by numerous lovers hidden in the shadows, by a relentless pursuit of fame. And in retrospect one can feel time pressing upon Nureyev - he must have felt it himself, dancing up into his 40s, unwilling to leave the limelight, half-joking about his "old galoshes". The stage, the dancing kept him alive as long as they could, as if to Nureyev death never really mattered - only the eternity in which his name, his work would be remembered. In 1992, shortly before his AIDS death, he, sick and struggling, staged his last ballet on a Paris stage: La Bayadère. 

This is the third installment of 'The Photograph', a series of pictures that I love, find remarkable or important, and which I will present on this blog on a non-regular basis.

The Photograph: SFGH Ward 5A

Unknown photographer: Shanti counsellor Ed Wolf works with a patient. Image courtesy of the San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library, via shantihistory.blogspot.com

"But hand-holding is a very difficult part of medicine. I do it a lot, and I try to do it right, and it is a very satisfying as well as wrenching part of the experience." - Robert Cohen, AIDS Doctor

The picture above, showing counsellor Ed Wolf comforting an AIDS patient in 1983, is one of the few images I was able to dig up so far from the early 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic began. It is a sentimental little find, transporting the viewer to San Francisco's famous AIDS ward 5A. The ward at its time possibly offered the most prominent window into an otherwise still very secluded community. Before 1985, when Rock Hudson's death hit the ignorant society with a vengeance, social and governmental support compassed near to nothing. The gay and lesbian community found itself left alone, and responsible for the many sick people. 

The Shanti Mission was just one of many projects all over the US where volunteers from the community stepped in and helped the best they could, when the rest of the world did not bother. The seclusion surely was a self-protective reflex as well, a shield against homophobic attacks which condemned the "gay cancer" and decried homosexuality as a sinful, dangerous lifestyle. In the end, they made the community much stronger than ever expected.

The seclusion of the first years might be the reason that only a few pictures are available nowadays, most of them hidden away in archives or private family albums; photo journalism and documentary photography did not really discover AIDS until much later. A greater selection, luckily, is featured in the touching documentary film We Were Here, which also includes an extensive interview with Ed Wolf. Weirdly enough I enjoy the fact that it is so hard to get an insight into the subject: It tells me that, after all, visually witnessing something is only worth so much. To really know what it feels like to be part of a community devastated by a disease, you must have been there, at the right time, at the right place.

This is the second installment of  'The Photograph', a series of pictures that I love, find remarkable or important, and which I will present on this blog on a non-regular basis.

The Photograph: Richard Avedon

Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, poets, New York, December 30, 1963

"I wanted to combine a portrait wit a story that I wanted to tell" - Richard Avedon

"Your photo is straight that's why it's good" - Allen Ginsberg to Richard Avedon

Researching Richard Avedon's photography for my upcoming university essay, I came across this picture, taken in 1963. I instantly liked it for its simplicity and directness, and for the ease which with the close relationship between the famous beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his life partner Peter Orlovsky is being portrayed - and for the fantastic facial hair, obviously.
Ginsberg became a kind of a "pin up" for the intellectual part of the 1970s gay movement after the picture had been published on the cover of the 8/1970 issue of Evergreen Review. Avedon himself once stated that "a portrait isn't a fact, only an opinion", hence adding a second, political dimension to his pictures. He found inspiration in the changing times, and enjoyed challenging conventions by taking up provocative subject matters. He had the power to do so - by 1960 Avedon was already a wealthy, established lifestyle and fashion photographer, counted among the world's ten greatest photographers by Popular Photography. His sense for great, straightforward portraiture was infallible. This and his experience certainly enabled him to carry a political message in his pictures so subtly, so beautifully, and yet so confidently.  I can't remember Richard Avedon ever being named as one of the idols of the gay movement - it may be because of his modesty which definitely resounds in his portraits - but I think he should be.

This is the first installment of  'The Photograph', a series of pictures that I love, find remarkable or important, and which I will present on this blog on a non-regular basis.