autoportrait by Austin

 

file under; filmed; male beauty
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dont know who shot this

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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here are the images from the entries that i had to delete because they got broken by spam. sorry person who knows about some wow gold in wow and person who likes to post very long strings of the word 'fuck', you must now find a new playground :).

Dennis Cooper + Robert Dickerson

Exactly What For, 2007

Cant Get You Out of My Head, 2006
oddly enough this is one of my only pieces of art to ever get displayed outside this website. it was at a show in Ireland curated by Alex Rose. the spam comments were mostly blank and didnt seem to advertise anything.

i posted this in like 2007 saying i wanted to make a movie where he plays Morrissey. for the unenlightened his name is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. photographer's name, don't know.

'Autoportrait', one of the first things i ever posted on here. polaroid self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1973. got filled to breaking with ads re sex and pharmaceuticals. he might have liked that.

 

file under; drawn; male beauty; photographed; robert mapplethorpe
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Samuel Wagstaff selfportrait
early 1980s?

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; twins
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file under; male beauty; robert mapplethorpe
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'outline of my lover.' dang thing [photographed here against an orange folder] took me nearly a month.

 

file under; drawn; male beauty
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James Lyons, filmed by Todd Haynes

--
he died on Thursday; he was 46. he was in Poison, Swoon, Safe, and even that daft film of Frisk. he cut Velvet Goldmine. he was hot and smart. listen to his commentary [with Haynes] on the Poison dvd if you haven't heard it yet.

things James Lyons and i had in common: admirers of Todd Haynes, riders of the Brooklyn F train, members of ACT UP

 

file under; filmed; male beauty
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self-portraits by Gil

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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Sorry

 

file under; +; drawn; male beauty
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Martin Tomlinson, 2003 or 2004
photographed by Andrew Kendall

large --> [1000x669 / 0.4MB]

--
the photo in the layout, just for Maria Kier :)

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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Hey Dennis

--
for the birthday boy. hopefully i get to give him the paper copy in March.

large [1200x814 / 1.1MB] -->
[click to view; right- or ctrl-click to save]

 

file under; +; drawn; male beauty
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James Dean, photographed by?

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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as previously promised, here is the mp3 to the song from which Look at My Hands takes its title. this song has a few of my favorite guitar riffs ever. in particular, i love the one that first starts at about 0:31 and repeats several times throughout the song.

right- or ctrl-click to save / 320kbps mp3 / ~9MB

Green Grow the Rushes by R.E.M.
on Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985 / lyrics

extra photograph
Michael Stipe 2002 -->

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.; sung
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Top: Kermit Oswald 1981. The photo is from his own collection, but I don't know who snapped it. Kermit was Keith Haring's best friend throughout his childhood, and when Keith was briefly studying commercial art at a now-defunct art school in Pittsburgh, Kermit organized a carful of Keith's friends to all go visit him as a surprise, in conjunction with some art thing Keith was doing there at the time. Kermit was surprised by how much this touched Keith, his major impression of the experience being that Keith Haring, the artist, was 'obviously on his way'. Kermit saw the edges of a star expanding fast, fusing light. He also remembers that Keith tried to talk to him, but something stalled and failed. He remembers being embarrassed without understanding why.

^that's interpretive, some of it. K+K were of course best friends; the Pittsburgh carful happened; the 'obviously' quote is real. The remainder =how I read one of the memories Kermit shares in Keith Haring's official biography [1991], a book composed of quotes from Haring and people who knew him [family, friends, boyfriends, artists, musicians, Timothy Leary, etc]. Kermit Oswald has a few long passages. I find myself absolutely stuck on his story.

different scene from Kermit, in his own words [emphases mine];

When Keith and I graduated from high school, Keith went off to Pittsburgh, and I enrolled at the Kutztown State Teachers College, which is now called Kutztown State University. [...]

Around 1977, I was into chalk drawings, which is part of a well-kept secret. I did them all over the university. I did them on every wall... I was getting sick of working in the classrooms. I was sick of making objects that nobody was paying attention to. So I decided to take my art to the streets.

In addition to the chalk drawings, I did chicken-fat drawings, which I did on the cafeteria steps. I did salt water drawings on the gymnasium floor, to represent sweat. I was making paintings with salt. I was carving wax. I was experimenting all over the place. So these were pretty aggressive works which I did all over the campus , and I was nearly thrown out of school. I lost my student job. I was stripped of financial aid. I have nasty letters from the president of the university.

Well, when Keith came to visit, I showed him my stuff, and he said, 'This is urban guerrilla art!' It really raised the hair on the back of my neck- like, all of a sudden, something clicked. And he said, 'Kermit, on this one you're years ahead of your time!' And it scared the living shit out of me, because for the first time in my life the person I really looked up to and respected for having the balls to go after what he really wanted, was slapping me on the back for something he admired. I kept thinking to myself, 'What the fuck am I going to do to top this?'

Now: not to say that a single thing Keith H ever said to Kermit about loving Kermit's art was disingenuous. Not to say that at all. Keith was probably the biggest fan of Kermit Oswald's art who ever lived [for those familiar with another discourse, we might say Keith Haring : Kermit Oswald :: Morrissey : Linder Sterling]. And, certainly, Kermit makes his art sound completely prophetic for 1977. Just reading his descriptions of his work, you can tell Kermit Oswald is a fantastic rhetorician/bullshitter, or he is a genius that hardly anyone ever knew because he thought, quote, 'you can't really go after art; it's more like it wants you.' Still, Kermit eventually did get a workspace one day, a place in Nyc where he could paint, and like I said before, he ended up doing a whole bunch of paintings of trees that apparently no one found even the slightest bit interesting, because I've never been able to learn anything about them other than the fact that they exist[ed?]. I'd really love to see them.

By the time Kermit is interviewed for Keith Haring's official biography, in the late 1980s, there is still something he doesn't understand-

Even though Keith and I were separated and doing our different things, we still kept up our friendship. In fact, he'd come back from Pittsburgh and so we'd be in contact every thirty or forty days. And, we were always writing to each other. I mean I have these really beautiful letters from Keith and these incredible drawings that he'd send me. The letters didn't make sense, somehow, because I wasn't aware of the gay issue... all of a sudden this guy I've been spending my whole childhood with turns around and has an attraction for me.

So when I started receiving these really beautiful letters and drawings I said, 'What is this?' I mean, what does this suggest? Because part of me was experiencing some sort of guilt about what people might think about me. I mean, they'd obviously assumed that Keith and I must have had our moments. But I would point out we had done absolutely everything together but that! So it is what it is.

Yeah. First of all, what I would give to read those letters and see those drawings. Wow.

And yeah second, you probably don't become a major artist if people think you had sex with Keith Haring and this is somehow a problem for you. Rushing to point out that you did everything 'but' that is... 'what it is'? Is that actually a helpful way to think about it, 'it is what it is'? Maybe Kermit is right when he says that art has to claim you, and not the other way around, but I think he is talking only about himself.

of course
talking about yourself, to yourself
[as Kermit did]
there's a name for that. think it's
the rainbow connection?

anyway, yeah. discomfort Has
a fucking beautiful face [more images] -->

 

file under; drawn; keith haring; male beauty; photographed; quoted
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--
Polaroid self-portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1973

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; robert mapplethorpe
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Look at My Hands

--
my first concert: R.E.M. Monster tour 1995, near Halloween. the first time i encounter Michael Stipe 'in person', in concert, he's already glammed-up and confident. i've told my parents that i'm staying the night with a friend, which i essentially am. we sneak out. believe it or not, a teacher from our high school picks us up and drives us to what was then the Blockbuster Pavilion, now the Hyundai Pavilion: supposedly the largest amphitheatre in the western half of the United States.

we're relatively close to the stage, maybe 5 rows back. when Michael Stipe first appears, he looks like he's wearing about 2 layers of clothing, max, like maybe 2 t-shirts with a pair of jeans. throughout the concert, swear to fucking god, he must take off like 10 different tops. he never looks like he's wearing more than 1 or 2 shirts at any time, but they keep coming off and keep coming off. his arms get totally bare and he starts to flex, blinking at his Krazy Kat tattoo. still, from someplace, the shirts keep coming off.

he never gets down to a bare chest, never runs out of shirts. Michael Stipe is, at that point, the most desirable thing i have ever seen. an animal so beautiful, i don't realize it's eating me.

the title for this drawing comes from one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, Green Grow the Rushes. mp3 maybe tomorrow.

 

file under; +; drawn; hero worship; male beauty; r.e.m.
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H* P****** t* F*** F** W****
[043 / 100]

 

file under; 100 in november; drawn; male beauty
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Wish You Were Here
[016 / 100]

--
i bow to Alex, aka 'porcelain skull', the first commenter here. his words inspired this drawing.

for me it's also in the same basic genre as Shoplifting. i want to do more drawings about... that kind of uneasy, yet unabashed, reaching out... ?

 

file under; +; 100 in november; drawn; male beauty
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Fuck Me Like We're From That Other City

 

file under; +; drawn; male beauty
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the title of Long May It Last comes from one of my favorite songs ever, i could listen to it every day

Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself by Morrissey [320kbps mp3 / around 8MB]
on Vauxhall + I, 1994 / lyrics

the album title is one of my favorite puns. Vauxhall is all kinds of things, including a make of car, a district of London, a British bar someplace [maybe also London], and a Tube stop. but also: Vox, Hall and I. yeahhh. go Moz.

also, the phrase 'Long may it last' is the best tattoo i've ever seen on anyone. if you're out there, Mary of Los Angeles [you know who you are], i would love to draw your tattoo if you would like to send me a picture of your arm.

 

file under; male beauty; morrissey; sung
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Militants [900x856 -->]

--
this is my second drawing on the big easel paper, also drawn from Russian porn. this time i used the manga markers. it's obviously not as complex as the first easel paper drawing, but it took about as long because i was paying a lot of attention to the thickness of the line. i was surprised and pleased how Dragonball Z / L.A. graffiti the drawing ended up.

Detail -->

 

file under; +; drawn; male beauty
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Morrissey

 

file under; +; drawn; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey
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Ollie 1988

--
Ollie, currently a Londoner, is aka Commonpeople. i drew this from a photo taken when he was 13.

Ollie has a skyline behind his head [top left] and radiant countries on his shirt because he's lived so many places.

this is the first drawing i did with a 'Uniball Vision' pen. it's a writing pen. fine-tip.

 

file under; drawn; male beauty
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Yury Oct 25

--
since we've never met and i've only seen about 5 photographs of him, and he's looked incredibly different in all of them, i have no idea whether this actually resembles him as a person or not.

this is my first drawing with Sharpie- the 'ultra fine point' kind, of which i bought 24 in assorted colors yesterday for under $1 apiece. bizarrely, the colors have no names or numbers! i wanted numbers!!

they give good line, if kind of 'dotty'. it's still maybe slightly thick for paper this size. i have some gigantic easel paper [no i don't have an easel but i have a very big safetyglass desk]; i would like to do a very big drawing with maybe 2 or 3 colors of Sharpie.

i still haven't tried the fountain pen + nibs i bought yesterday. i fell asleep before i could.

 

file under; drawn; male beauty
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I love Steven

--
first multicolor experiment

 

file under; drawn; male beauty
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well obviously the moment was captured, so in that sense, yeah, his beauty is eternal. but i look at Bjørn Andresen aged 15 and i just feel time passing so rapidly, with the intensity of a physical sensation. was he 15? i think he may have actually been 14 in these stills.

Death in Venice [hail Visconti] is one of my all-time favorite movies and all-time favorite pieces of art in any media. it's better, even, than the Mann book. shit you not.

 

file under; filmed; male beauty
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Ha, finding shit like this makes me want to manifesto, 'every [populist?] artist of any note, who has ever lived, has made use of the red + at some point.' Warhol's red-painted cross silk screening: easy for_instance. Maybe there are better red +'s in Warhol to discover.

Anyway, Keith Haring's art was always a lot sexier than him as a person [although he was incredibly photogenic]. I hadn't really thought about him or his art for a really long time when I most recently started using the +; it wasn't a conscious reference to anything, though I have drawn the + in margins and shit since I was a very little kid. But Haring's art has been in my life an incredibly long time, as it's basically modern art training wheels. The cartoon version. I bought Keith Haring Editions on Paper 1982-1990 [the Katz book] for an incredibly low price, like $25 maybe, in Boston, over ten years ago. It's an outsize book so it's followed me anyplace I've had large bookshelf space, including to Brooklyn. Until I picked up that Mao Mag thing I mentioned, I hadn't thought about Keith Haring or his art for years. In my recent reappraisal of his stuff, I've been pleased to discover

[1] dude was a genius
[2] dude also tagged using the red +.

'Untitled', 1985. Yeah, basically all his works were untitled, and their number is staggering. It makes me want to sit down with all his work and title it. I mean, not like I feel my connection to the work is _that_ special or anything, but I'm competent at writing titles. Who does not love to title their artwork? That's fucking daft. It's totally the best part.

This 1985 one, I think I call it Red Plus.

 

file under; drawn; hero worship; keith haring; male beauty
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outfit 1: 2005, 'i raided Conor Oberst's closet, blow me'
outfit 2: 1999ish, what is that, duct tape? i own a closer crop of this print, and the weirdness of his outfit isn't readily apparent.

outfit 2 photo by Todd Oldham; don't know who shot the first one.

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.
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not quite
2005

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; twins
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Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith
photographed by Norman Seeff

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed
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Josh Winter, 2005

Josh used to play bass with my boyfriend and me. Now he plays keyboards in Waterlaso. I took this photo in an apartment building on Hollywood Bl that was once owned by Peter Falk. While Steven and I were living there, we spotted Ron Jeremy in the building several times. He didn't live there, but at least one time, he was clearly there filming a porn movie. He was in the lobby coercing some poor woman who kept saying 'I don't want to do that with that guy here'.

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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Nick Snider, photographed by?

 

file under; male beauty
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Sexual jealousy at the state of the art

Want

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; matthew barney; photographed; quoted
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Robert Mapplethorpe, shot by Andy Warhol, 1983 [left]
self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1975 [right]

both Polaroid
Robert's vanilla
Warhol's a Polacolor ER print

 

file under; andy warhol; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; robert mapplethorpe; twins
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2003
Kodak disposable

 

file under; male beauty
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++ [collect all 5]

 

file under; male beauty; matthew barney
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These are 4 stills from my favorite film, Blow Job by Andy Warhol, which I have cropped into squares.

and

 

file under; andy warhol; filmed; hero worship; male beauty
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the one on the right in the top one, and on the floor in the bottom one, sent me two of the most amazing letters, once, before he got famous. just look at him; imagine what getting a letter from him must be like; you don't know half of it.

Virginia Puff-Paint by Jeremy Laing, 2004
Jeremy Laing and Will Munro, shot by Bruce LaBruce

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; twins
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Jake, 2004
shot by Ryan McGinley

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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Ryan McGinley and Kent somebody, 2006
shot by Amy Kellner

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; twins
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One of my favorite Lou Reed songs, from 2000's Ecstasy. I'll label it an 'overlooked' masterpiece because no one has ever spoken to me about it.

Rock Minuet
by Lou Reed / lyrics
on Ecstasy, 2000

 

file under; lou reed; male beauty; sung
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In the 1997 Taschen 'Complete Works 1976-1996' for Pierre et Gilles (perhaps the best $40 that has ever been spent on a gift for me*), there's an essay written in French by Bernard Marcadé. It's translated into English by Martyn Back and into German by Uta Grosenick.

There's also an essay written in English by Dan Cameron. It's translated into French by Frédéric Maurin, and into German, again by Uta Grosenick. I think in both cases, Uta Grosenick actually translated the English version into German, not either French version, but obviously I don't know (might you know?).

Anyway, translator irrespective- the essay titles are as follows-

-
Bernard Marcadé's
In the original French: 'Pierre et Gilles, ou Il n'y a pas de second degré'
In English: 'Pierre et Gilles, or What you see is what you get'
In German: 'Pierre et Gilles, oder »What you see is what you get«'

-
Dan Cameron's
In the original English: 'In the Name of Love'
In French: 'Au nom de l'amour'
In German: 'Im Namen der Liebe'

-
My impression [?]
;There's no real way to say Il n'y a pas de second degré in English - literally, in French, 'There is no second degree', generally meaning something like 'There's not another layer/level'.
;There's no real way to say it in German either.
;There's also no real way to say 'What you see is what you get' in German.
;But 'in the name of love' means the same in all three languages.

-
Christophe 1981

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; quoted; twins
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Reasons to Live

1, 2005

2, 2006

Smaller, smaller...

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; self capture
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2 more

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; the libertines
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He's been in two stunning films, Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine and Mike Figgis' The Loss of Sexual Innocence. Other than that, the crap-roster is pretty incredible - from that Woody Allen movie to indie garbage like B Monkey to the painfully calculated attempt at a cult hit that is Killer Tongue, it's hard to know where to begin. Bend It Like Beckham is enjoyable enough and probably his best-known film, but still he's perching, waiting to be really seen, actually remembered. Maybe his role in the next James Bond movie will be the one, but I sort of doubt it.

It must be said, neither Velvet Goldmine nor The Loss of Sexual Innocence demands much of him as an actor. He plays the former in more-or-less one tone (to good effect), and he has almost no lines in the latter. Not to say he's a poor actor, precisely, but he seems to have two effective strategies, blankness and melodrama. When he tries for something in between, it rarely works.

If films were still silent, he'd be one of The Ones.

For me, he's a symbol, what of, I don't know. He's one of the beauties, and if he's remembered, it will probably be for that only. His surface is endless and holy. Anyone who claims that physical beauty has symmetry at its heart has never closely studied his face.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, photographed by Greg Lotus

 

file under; male beauty; photographed
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Most days, still kind of do.

Michael Stipe, 2003, photographed by?

One of the best live versions I have ever heard of ANY song by ANYONE is Harborcoat by R.E.M. from the 'Bochum 1985' bootleg. It makes me wish I could be Bill Berry as well, or rather play the drums the way he did back in 1985.

Harborcoat live in Germany, 1985
by R.E.M. / lyrics
album version on Reckoning, 1984

Too bad, isn't it, that the most recent R.E.M. album, Around the Sun, was such crap? Given that it was an overt response to 9/11 and the Iraq war, the impression I got was, 'OK, the war has creatively destroyed R.E.M.' I have high hopes for the next R.E.M. album, though. I found New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up both subpar (the former, dreadfully so - why in hell does everyone call it their 'return to form'? it's SHIT!). But after those records, they made Reveal, their best album since Murmur.

Beat a Drum
by R.E.M. / lyrics
from Reveal, 2001

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.; sung
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Their talent is not in music making, but in physical beauty.

Martin Tomlinson, Selfish Cunt

Authority Confrontation live in London, c. 2004
by Selfish Cunt / lyrics coming
album version on No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper, 2004

Tom Atkin, The Paddingtons

Tommy's Disease live in London, c. 2004
by The Paddingtons / lyrics coming
album version on First Comes First, 2005

-
photos by Andrew Kendall

 

file under; male beauty; photographed; sung
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art not meant to be seen or heard by anybody

self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe
Polaroid, 1973

Honey You Know Where to Find Me
rough demo by Morrissey / lyrics
Southpaw Grammar sessions, c. 1995

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey; photographed; robert mapplethorpe; sung
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Nick McCarthy and Alex Kapranos, V Festival, 2004

another by Andrew Kendall

 

file under; franz ferdinand; male beauty; photographed
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p. 22 'This means that treachery is beautiful if it makes us sing.'

 

file under; jean genet; male beauty; mike joyce; morrissey; quoted
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Morrissey, March 1985, photographed by Stephen Wright

Morrissey, 2006, photographed by?

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey; photographed
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Carl Barât and Pete Doherty, 2003

photographs by the peerless Andrew Kendall

My favorite track by The Libertines, one of the best songs ever written, is Last Post on the Bugle from their second and final album.

Last Post on the Bugle
by The Libertines / lyrics
from their 2004 self-titled album

 

file under; disbanded; male beauty; photographed; sung; the libertines
link / 0 have made it up