James Bidgood, Master of Erotic Gay Photography, Dies at 88
nytimes.comJames Bidgood, who elevated erotic gay photography to an art in the 1960s and ’70s with his carefully staged phantasmagoric pictures, and who was the anonymous director behind “Pink Narcissus,” a gay film released in 1971 that became something of a cult classic, died on Jan.
31 in Manhattan. He was 88. Brian Paul Clamp, director of his gallery, ClampArt, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by complications related to Covid-19.
Mr. Bidgood, who came to New York from Wisconsin at 18, was a drag performer in the 1950s at Club 82 in the East Village, where he also sometimes designed sets and costumes.
By the early 1960s he was taking photographs for men’s physique magazines like Muscleboy. “They were badly lit and uninteresting,” he told The New York Times in 2011. “Playboy had girls in furs, feathers and lights.
