Best known for her series of texts appropriating Gertrude Stein’s poetry, and her portraits of male hustlers in New York and Los Angeles in the 1990s, Eve Fowler is a photographer, video, and performance artist whose work explores the lives and experiences of marginalized and suppressed sexual minorities; portraying the body as a site for political and social engagement.
Fowler shot her hustlers on the streets of the West Village in New York City and Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles between 1993 and 1998. The portraits explore queerness and social “otherness.” The untitled, intimate photographs lay bare ambiguities of identity, class, sexuality, and gender—all of which combine to lend the figure of the hustler a semi-dangerous allure, and the ambiguous attractions of the social outlaw. Stark and unencumbered by typical compositional elements or dramatic lighting, Fowler’s subjects demand direct consideration, forcing the viewer to confront in a single face both masculine vulnerability and intrepidity.
Fowler received her B.A. in journalism from Temple University in 1986, and her M.F.A. in photography from Yale University in 1992. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Art.