From Lexi Manatakis’ article for DAZED:
With just a quick glance at photographer James Bidgood’s work you’re transported to a homoerotic dreamland of Disney-esque narratives infused with total campness. As a stylistic precursor to photographers David La Chapelle and Steven Arnold, Bidgood’s images turned 1970s-80s queer sex workers and porn artists into rainbow popping and glitter glimmering mermaids, genies, angels, and matadors that queerified the fantasy canon in a pre-Stonewall context where you could be killed for being overtly gay. With this unabashed queerness, Bidgood’s legacy spotlights the importance of fearlessly and proudly asserting one’s identity in art.
It’s this exact pride that is celebrated in the Museum of Sex’s current show James Bidgood: Reveries showing until 8 September 2019 in New York. Reveries unites Bidgood’s work across covers for early gay porn magazines and his avantgarde homo-erotic films to explore his impact on both gay art history, and the proliferation of gay history itself. “Bidgood’s photos are unapologetic records of pure visual pleasure,” reflects Reveries curator Lissa Rivera. “The colours, the lighting, attention to detail and reference to tropes of glamour are celebratory.”