From Barry Pierce’s article for DAZED:
On 1 February 2022 the news broke that the legendary queer artist and filmmaker James Bidgood had died. Emerging in the 1960s New York art scene alongside Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, Bidgood’s name was never afforded the same reverence as his contemporaries, mostly due to the fact that his most famous work, the 71-minute dreamy gay fantasia Pink Narcissus (1971), was attributed to ‘Anonymous’ for decades. It was only in the mid-90s when Bidgood’s name finally reunited with his greatest work.
Pink Narcissus’s effect on queer culture is vast, from its obvious influence on the photography of Pierre et Gilles and David LaChapelle, to the sheer amount of times one sees images from the film as Twitter headers or used on creative mood boards. Filmed between the years 1963 and 1970 and shot mostly on 8mm, Bidgood built the iconic pink boudoir set in his own New York apartment. The film’s star, Bobby Kendall, who appears in many guises – a matador, a prostitute, and the Greek god Pan – was an unknown model who Bidgood had used previously as a subject in his photography. Kendall, much like Bidgood himself, quickly faded into obscurity after the film was released.