Gay Adult Film Star Shawn Wolfe Dead at 35

Contents:

• JAM BIDGOOD, A MASTER OF GAY PHOTOGRAPHY, DI AT 88
• WAKEFIELD POOLE, PNEER GAY PORNOGRAPHY, DI AT 85
• TREAT WILLIAMS, LGBTQ+ ALLY GAY-THEMED FILMS, DEAD AT 71

JAM BIDGOOD, A MASTER OF GAY PHOTOGRAPHY, DI AT 88

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThose we’ve lostIn addn to his elaborately staged imag of gay fantasi, he ma the film “Pk Narciss, ” a cult classic released anonymoly Tullo for The New York TimPublished Feb. 7, 2022Jam Bidgood, who elevated mpy gay photography the 1960s and ’70s wh his refully staged phantasmagoric pictur, and who was the anonymo director behd “Pk Narciss, ” a gay film released 1971 that beme somethg of a cult classic, died on Jan.

Bidgood was also shootg the film that, 1971, would turn to “Pk Narciss, ” the loosely plotted story of a gay htler’s fantasi. Vcent Canby, reviewg the movie The Tim when opened two Manhattan theaters May of that year, dismissed as “a passive, tackily rated surreal fantasy out of that pre‐Gay‐Activist era when homosexuals hid closets and read novels about sensive young men who mted suici bee they uld not go on. For years, as the film gaed chet the gay world, gusg who had ma was a parlor game.

WAKEFIELD POOLE, PNEER GAY PORNOGRAPHY, DI AT 85

“Sce workg wh Bidgood’s materials, ” she said by email, “I’ve unrstood the ep importance of his work on so many queer people, who have shared wh me that they had not seen beg gay as betiful the same way before seeg Jam’s work. ”His photographs, she noted, were ma at a time when erotic imag and gay liftyl faced substantial legal rtrictns.

Clients would hire him to sign their outfs for society balls, and once he started takg photographs, he would sometim recycle those gowns to create the scen for the pictur he took his his first seri of homoerotic photographs, “Water Colors, ” he created the ocean by spreadg silver lamé across his apartment floor and fabrited a ve out of wax paper. A GoFundMe page was seekg to fance a funeral and creatn of an archive of his Bidgood’s photographs were often labeled “mp, ” a term whose fn has varied over the s wh the gay world and beyond.

TREAT WILLIAMS, LGBTQ+ ALLY GAY-THEMED FILMS, DEAD AT 71

”A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 16 of the New York edn wh the headle: Jam Bidgood, Master of Campy Gay Photography, Is Dead at 88. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHe gave up a dance reer to create a crossover, and now classic, h film 1971 that had both gay and straight dienc, and celebri, lg up to see TuranOne New York night the early 1970s, a dancer and buddg filmmaker named Wakefield Poole went to see a gay porn flick lled “Highway Htler” at a n-down theater Tim Square wh his iends. Poole, like untls gay men of his generatn, was empowered s aftermath.

What he had wnsed onscreen that night didn’t remble the sexual liberatn he was experiencg as a proud gay man New, armed wh a 16-limeter Bolex mera, Mr. He head to Fire Island P, the seclud summer En for gay men jt off Long Island, and there began filmg experimental movi wh his iends, pturg them makg love on beach and shady he did so wh an tr’s touch, as if he were some very horny versn of D. Poole soon ma a feature-length, surrealistic movie lled “Boys the Sand” (the tle a spoof on “The Boys the Band, ” the groundbreakg 1968 play and 1970 film adaptatn about gay men New York), and s release 1971 proved revelatory.

He was hailed as a pneer of gay porn, and the film beme a crossover h that changed attus about pornography among both the gay and straight dienc that led up to see movie, wh the adult film star Casey Donovan, was posed of three steamy vigt: First, Mr. Poole said at the time, “that gay people uld look at and say, ‘I don’t md beg gay — ’s betiful to see those people do what they’re dog. Variety reviewed the movie, a rare stance of cril verage of hard-re gay pornography by a mastream publitn (though took a dim view of the film).