4. ARRESTING IMAGES/FUGITIVE TESTIMONY: THE RESISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY OF EVERGON

Abstract

Evergon’s Manscapes, accompanied by titles that do not provide exact locations of the places he photographs, accord respect to these spaces and in doing so preserve their status as commonplace images. In documenting those locales where gay desire is enacted on a daily basis, the Manscapes speak to the theme of “the everyday.” These everyday photographs provide testimony, not, obviously, in the formal and legal sense of the term, but rather in fidelity to the archaic meaning of the word as indicating: “a solemn protest or declaration.”⁶ To gaze at these images is to be drawn into spaces of gay resistance, to vicariously inhabit beat and cruising ground space, to behold signs of resistance. For the Manscapes are profoundly allegorical. Upon viewing these images for the first time they appear unremarkable, almost mundane in their depiction of common scenes (parks, foreshores, secluded hinterlands and other public spaces). As the clues in the photographs are identified, the viewer imbues the photographs with an aura of desire.⁷ In their totality, the Manscapes testify to the existence of those everyday places that are subject to processions of desiring male bodies.

Citation

Dalton, D. (2004), "4. ARRESTING IMAGES/FUGITIVE TESTIMONY: THE RESISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY OF EVERGON", Kenyon, A. and Rush, P. (Ed.) Aesthetics of Law and Culture: Texts, Images, Screens (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 73-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(04)34004-4