[Two Men in Silhouette]

Mark Morrisroe

ca. 1987 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Sexuality and mortality—which many would say are central preoccupations of humankind—are key to Morrisroe’s biography and art. The son of a drug-addicted mother, a teenage hustler, and a precocious punk queer, Morrisroe carried a bullet (shot by a disgruntled john) in his chest from the age of eighteen and consequently walked with a limp that added one more element to his outsider self-image. Sex and death were persistent themes in his work, with pronounced poignancy after his 1986 AIDS diagnosis. In this work, Morrisroe has taken a page from a gay S&M magazine, cut out the shapes of two naked men, and used the sheet as a negative to print a unique image in which the figures—literally absent—appear as dark silhouettes against a netherworld of sexual activity.

Artist

Mark Morrisroe

Date

ca. 1987

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2009