Page 19 - Faces of AIDS: 102 Portraits
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that the Eagle yank Wigler’s politically something personally compelling in
incorrect icons off the walls prefiguring his roster of famous public icons like
the exact way the fundamentalist Donnie Russo, Michael Pereya, Guy
United States Senate would soon yank Baldwin, Brian Dawson, Rob Marvin,
Mapplethorpe’s icons off the walls of Mike Torkildson, and Colt Thomas,
museums. the fifth International Mr. Leather,
whom he made translucent and
What had been a pop-culture, esthetic, transcendent on Drummer magazine’s
and timely queer inquiry into BDSM most beautiful cover. In fact, if ever
ritual and psychology—the erotic there was one supremely perfect
attraction-repulsion fetishes around Wigler cover photograph, it is his
death—was suddenly censored. Like color shot of the sun-drenched Colt
Mapplethorpe, Wigler and his authentic Thomas on Drummer 126 (March 1989)
1980s cultural iconography were caught that was published the week Robert
in the wrong place at the wrong time Mapplethorpe died in a dark storm of
by panicked people who were reacting censorship.
against everything erotic enjoyed during
the AIDS-free 1970s. Undeterred, Wigler’s fin de siecle work is a graphic
and not to be erased, Wigler undercut encyclopedia of the faces, facts,
pretense, persisted with his truth, and and fantasies of homomasculine
survived the gay culture war. leather culture from its gestation in
Marlon Brando’s The Wild One in the
Forging ahead to self-fund his Faces 1950s, to its liberation in the 1970s,
of AIDS project, he shot dozens of to its disruption in the 1980s, to its
erotic videos for companies such resurrection in the twenty-first century.
as Hot House and Bear magazine’s
Brush Creek Media. When he snapped It is precisely the frisson of Wigler’s
Gunner Robinson for his first of thirty- erotic art that adds even more living
four Drummer covers (issue 57, October breathing humanity and celebration to
1982), he joined a sleek Drummer peer his elegaic Faces of AIDS.
group of cover photographers including
Robert Mapplethorpe, Lou Thomas, —Jack Fritscher, Editor-in-chief,
Jim Moss, Victor Arimondi, Robert Drummer Magazine
Pruzan, Rose de Castro, and Charles
Gatewood; and he shot arguably Jim Wigler shot the cover photographs for 34
some of the best covers international Drummer issues which may be viewed at An
Historical Perspective of the Covers, Mastheads,
Drummer ever published. Contents, and Staff of Drummer Magazine:
57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 109,
Besides his knack for portraying 110, 122, 126, 132, 133, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142,
perfectly shot and perfectly hot private 143, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 181, 202, 209,
210
guys, Wigler excelled at revealing
