IN DEFENSE OF BEAUTY

IN DEFENSE OF BEAUTY is a book I wrote in 1995 in which I examine the question: why do some people consider beauty a frivolous pursuit ?

The text from that books is reproduced here.  I’m planning a reissue of this book so that its photographs can seen with the text.   Some years back, I was told that my book was being taught in a graduate school philosophy / religion seminar for its central teaching: When we read the Biblical instruction that we are created in God’s image – what that means is that we have been given the gift of co-creation. And having that gift and power, we have a responsibility to create beauty in and around ourselves.

In Defense of Beauty

(With Some Help from a Few Friends)

In 1979 I asked Edmund White for a blurb for the jacket of the book of photographs I was making about the gay community at Fire Island Pines. He told me that in some quarters, my pictures would elicit anger. Some people, he predicted, would complain that the book was false because it excluded the unbeautiful. To head off this attack, he offered a quote which said essentially that while the gay community needed its list of grievances, it also needed an image of its aspirations.

I was aware that I had excluded aspects of our community from my pictures. I had, in fact, also rejected them from my life. For example, one night at a party in the Pines, I found myself standing, camera in hand, a few feet away from a young man who was retching his guts out. From my angle, I could see the name of the house, Utopia, in large block letters affixed to the wall just below this event. An ironic image, I thought. But I did not take the picture; it was a lesson for which I had no need. Had I taken and published that picture, no doubt some critic would have credited me with an “unflinching eye”.

I am no longer surprised when I hear the charge that some people in my pictures are “too beautiful” or “only the most perfect bodies”, for I have come to see the mistake in perception from which these comments come. The implication is that I am an elitist, or as one friend suggested, the new word is lookist. But people who find fault with beauty, who trivialize it by assuming a negative quality in it, diminish themselves. The ability to appreciate beauty in others is a prerequisite to express it in oneself. As Oscar Wilde observed:

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. That is a fault.

One cause of this mistake in perception is the expectation we have about photographs of a person. Most of us experience ourselves in photographs made by well-meaning people who stick flash cameras in our faces and tell us to smile. This process, repeated throughout our lives, convinces us that we do not look good in pictures and that photographs are inherently unflattering. When we see someone who looks gorgeous in a picture, we assume that he or she is of a different race – some special people God created so that the rest of us may feel inadequate. Most people I meet, including most of the people I photograph, are believers in this ungenerous and partial God.

As Stephen R. Covey demonstrates in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, what we see depends upon our expectations. To illustrate this point, he provides a perception test employing three drawings. The principal drawing is designed to appear either as a young and beautiful woman or as an old woman with a large and hooked nose. Which of these images one sees first depends upon which of the two collateral drawings one sees prior to looking at the principal drawing; one is of a young woman; the other is of an old woman. What this test demonstrates, Covey explains, is this:

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are – or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

The lesson in the exercise is this: if we assign negative values to beauty, say, as a defense against our belief that it is unattainable either in or to ourselves, we will not appreciate its value when we see it in others. When we hear the denigration of beauty, we hear the voice of a wounded person whose vision has been corrupted, preventing that person from seeing the power of beauty to create change.

What exactly is the concept of beauty we so harshly measure ourselves against? The most common images of beauty are in advertisements. We should never use such images as a standard, because real people stand no chance against an airbrushed or computer-enhanced photo. The idea of what constitutes beauty in the body has been continuously evolving in art since people first represented themselves on cave walls. For centuries, from the time of the Greeks and Romans to nearly the present, our feelings about our nakedness have been so shame ridden, we hardly considered our bodies to be capable of expressing beauty at all. The breakthrough in the Renaissance was followed almost immediately by prudes applying fig leaves. But the original Greek concept was kallos, the union of physical and spiritual beauty. They believed, and I agree, that the body can express the concept of balance in life. To those most sensitive to this idea, the body can stand as the ultimate metaphor for beauty itself.

In the modern age this idea, most closely associated with architecture, was developed by Louis Sullivan as “form follows function.” This means that the beauty of a thing lies in its structure, that which is inherent to its purpose. In the context of the body, this suggests that we love seeing the body’s muscular system – that which allows it to move. We find particular beauty in those bodies which express a potential to move in an extraordinary way, as in the athlete. This is also why we find airplanes and sailboats to be beautiful. But the deeper appreciation of physical beauty, in minds open to the possibility, is that as the structure of the body is shared by us all, we also share the potential expressed by the developed body. The gymnast does not pump adrenaline alone. As we watch the performance, we too pump this hormone.

Many people cannot see this potential in themselves. One writer, in a review of Extraordinary Friends, said that he found himself thinking, “Gee, I wish I looked like that Or that.” Finding himself in the grips of the “Tyranny of Beauty,” he wished I would look for the beauty in “ordinary mortals.” One way to address this request is to ask: Were I a choreographer, and you had admired the talent of the dancers in my ballet, would you suggest that I make a ballet for the “Two Left-Footed” to free you of the “Tyranny of Talent”? What this writer does not see is that he is self-selecting for exclusion and shifting the responsibility for his feelings to me. Frankly, I spend too much time making excuses for myself to take on the task for another. He does not yet understand the truth eloquently stated in the “Messiah’s Handbook,” found within the book Illusions by Richard Bach:

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it however.

I once listened for a half hour to a seriously overweight man tell me that his physical situation was hopeless. To prove his point, he told me that he had once shed sixty pounds, gotten to a comfortable weight, and then regained the entire weight. When I hear someone trying to convince me (and, of course, himself) of the reality of the barriers to his happiness, I am reminded of another lesson in the “Messiah’s Handbook”:

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.

I am not unsympathetic to the problems we all share with self-image. But I am more sympathetic to the efforts we can make to realize our dreams. While making Extraordinary Friends, I met and photographed Jason, who told me that he had spent years hiding in his house on weekends at Fire Island because of shame over his weight problem. He was so beautiful, I could hardly believe his story, until he showed me his “before” pictures. It was his “after” pictures, of course, that I included in Extraordinary Friends.

The wider we open our eyes to our potential to develop our beauty on every level, the more evidence we find to support our efforts. When I first saw Leni Riefenstahl’s photo essay Last of the Nuba, I was struck by the enormous beauty of these people at all ages. Reading of their material simplicity and meager diet, I realized the degenerative force of our Western abundance. The presumption that age equals deterioration is just that – presumption. I saw a seventy-eight year old body builder on television one night who disabused me of the notion that there was a limit to how long one could keep it together. As it is, the writer who once said that I photographed only “well-built boys” was not looking closely enough. He did not realize how many men in their forties and beyond I included because they had challenged our expectations about aging by not retiring from their bodies.

But I do not intend this essay as an ad for gyms. I make these observations only to suggest that whatever beauty we choose to express in our physical selves has the power to help us grow in appreciation of our whole selves. As one friend in his late fifties who takes good care of himself told me, “I am a good one of what I am”. I have no argument with those who see no value in this process for themselves. That is their business. They should not, however, defend their choice by suggesting that the cultivation of beauty is an arid activity.

And I do not doubt that beauty can be misused. I knew a young man who told me that his greatest pleasure in the stunning transformation he made in his body was the power he obtained to reject those who had once rejected him. I do not find this armor attractive. A better insight was given to me by a young man who was prompted by the end of a relationship to make a significant physical improvement in himself. At first he was angry at the men who began coming on to him. “I was the same person inside when they ignored me before,” he said. “But then I realized that I wasn’t. My insides had changed, too. I was stronger inside so I was attracting men I desired but had previously though unavailable.

The question is this: Can we look at beauty with eyes free of envy? Can we simply enjoy? I recall a Greek torso in a Geneva museum so perfect in its examination of male beauty that I recognized this sculpture’s maker was a friend, a mind who loved what I loved. What this ancient artist had found in stone, I was seeking to memorialize in the silver nitrate of photography.

In his article “Coming Home to Beauty,” Pierre De Lattre describes beauty’s potential effect on us:

Beautiful art is known to us by an experience of sudden clarity…Beautiful clarity stops us in our tracks; brings us to what Aristotle called “aesthetic arrest,”or in the words of Joseph Campbell, “that enchantment of the heart by which the mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.” Schopenhauer calls this the suspension of our will, during which our interests in having or not having, taking or fear of being taken, fighting or fleeing, praising or ridiculing, are suspended.

This identical suspension can occur when we meet beauty in the flesh. The only limit to our appreciation and enjoyment of the person is our envy, jealousy, or the judgments those emotions engender in us. Those who heave freed themselves of the bondage of their insecurity, who are “comfortable in their own skin,” as the French say, attract beauty to themselves.

The next question is: What is the responsibility of the artist in portraying the world? The short answer to this question is: To tell the truth. A photograph, by its very nature, does not tell the whole truth. A photograph is a two-dimensional interpretation of, at least, a four-dimensional experience, paradoxically capable of refining and enhancing the larger event it portrays. We do this in our minds all the time. For example, when we make love, do we see how beautiful our lover looks in the light of the moment? Do we recall a particularly sensuous memory, or do we see him in our mind as he appeared to us during that morning’s argument over who never remembered to take out the garbage?

The artist who understands the craft of recording an instant knows that a person, a body, is capable of manipulating an infinite universe of attitude, gesture, and proportion. The artist has this entire universe of possibility from which to choose. When someone I have photographed says to me, “I can’t believe how beautiful you made m look,” I say, “No, what you mean is you can’t believe is that you possess the beauty I found in you. Get over it!” This is the truth I wish to demonstrate. On behalf of the many friends who overcame an insecurity to be in my pictures, I say to the critics who said I photograph “only the physically perfect,” a thousand thanks from us all. Or as one friend quipped, “Get me his address, I’ll send him a dozen roses.”

I also do not limit my idea of beauty in the body to what is considered the classical ideal. George Dureau has found enormous beauty in men from the streets and men who are maimed. Joel-Peter Witkin has found spiritual power and beauty in people our ancestors relegated to freak shows. By bringing great formal skill to his subjects, Robert Mapplethorpe invited us to see the beauty in men whom the world had ignored. In the 1940s and ‘50s, George Platt-Lynes and his friends made beautiful pictures which spoke of the feelings of separation in the gay male experience.

For myself, I have seen a different and untold story. This is the story of the transformation of the gay community by its power to overcome the stereotype of itself as weak and ineffectual. It is the story of our ability to love one another. It is the story of people who have learned that if they wanted to make sure they were invited to the party, they’d better throw the party themselves. It is a celebration of our success. This is a radical story that too many in the straight world do not want to hear. They prefer us at a distance, suffering. A look at our coverage in the media confirms their attitude. Unfortunately, those gay people who have yet to find the power within themselves to make the journey I record, who do not see themselves as sharing in the success, who would be satisfied with pity rather than respect, look with anger at this celebration to which they feel uninvited. Oscar Wilde, commenting on criticism that comes from such minds, observed:

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.

Given that making images is an editing process; does the artist have some moral obligation not to exclude that which he or she finds less than beautiful? On man who interviewed me recently seems to think so. He wrote that if one looked at my pictures, one would be led to believe that there are “no poor gays alive who have a few excess ounces of fat on their torsos,” and that we all spend our lives hanging out at pools and beaches. The implication of this comment is that I have concocted a frivolous fantasy. My response to the first criticism is to point out that the spare fat comes and goes depending on the relative balance of the ice cream and salad in our lives. While we may prefer to eat the ice cream, we certainly prefer to see ourselves without it girding our loins. In harmony with Mr. Wilde:

I have given them what they like, so that they may learn to appreciate what I like to give them.

A valuable ethical and moral lesson underlies this editing process. We live in a world of enormous man-created ugliness, both within and around us. We suffer from a condition I call illopticy – visual illiteracy. As an artist, I can deal with this problem either by rubbing your face in the mess or, by the celebration of the solution, showing the beauty that we can achieve. Richard Ellman, Wilde’s biographer, stated the aesthetic philosophy of Wilde on this subject succinctly:

By its creation of beauty, art reproaches the world, calling attention to the world’s faults by disregarding them.

As to the second criticism, the suggestion that I have created a frivolous fantasy, I say that it is great mistake to think that no important value resides in our impulse to hedonistic pursuit. As George Santayana wrote a hundred years ago in study of aesthetics, The Sense of Beauty:

We may measure the degree of happiness and civilization which any race has attained by the proportion of its energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits, to the adornment of life and the culture of imagination. For it is in the spontaneous play of his faculties that man finds himself and his happiness. By play we are designating … whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake…Play, in this sense, may be our most useful occupation.

In Gay Soul, the great gay poet and filmmaker James Broughton gives us an insight to live and love by. In response to Mark Thompson’s asking how we maintain gaiety in a cheerless world, he said:

Do what you can. Begin by curbing your sneers and complaints. Heighten your spirits. Celebrate your existence, don’t deplore it. Live in your body, not in your minds. Eat more chocolate than beans. Fuck often. Follow your bliss over the hill and dale.

I know that the pools in which we play are surrounded by sadness. In fact, the very pool where I made the first photographs for Out of the Studio was where, a few weeks before those pictures were made, my friends held me in their arms in the last days of my late lover’s life, praying for his release. Those pictures were meant to help me stay connected with what I feared I was losing forever. I needed to remember a conversation I had had years before, at the funeral of my best friend in college. His five-year-old daughter turned to me and asked, “Does this mean we can’t play anymore?” The cosmic question. “No”, I answered, “it just means that we are sad today.”

What my photographs do not reveal on their surface is that a large number of these perfect men in my pictures are HIV positive or have AIDS. I am myself a member of this group. Eleven friends who appear in Out of the Studio and Extraordinary Friends have died since my first book was published in late 1991. Some of these deaths occurred with breathtaking closeness to the time we made the pictures. We had no idea how near we danced to the precipice. And yes, I have purposefully not included a KD lesion on occasion, not because I saw it as a fault, but because I believe in the possibility of it’s cure. And the pictures each of us carries mentally of this disease threaten to obliterate the fragile image of our hope.

I am blessed to have in my first book the voice of Paul Monette in his foreword. Paul established himself as the preeminent poet of the collective pain of us gay men. His welcome of my celebration of our physical selves, still connected to one another in love (and lust too, whatever keeps us going), was, to my ears, a song of enormous spiritual courage. I hope that others will see what he saw, that we must not abandon ourselves in our grief. We must sing until our last breath. As he did.

Many fine artists have told the story of our alienation and our pain. In his book About Looking, in the chapter titled “Uses of Photography,” John Berger points out: “The truth is that most photographs taken of people are about suffering, and most of that suffering is man-made.” Berger suggests that inherent in photography is the possibility of its use for prophecy, a use beyond the mere recording of what is. He advocates the extension of photography to this alternative practice:

For the photographer this means thinking of her or himself not so much as a reporter to the rest of the world but, rather, as a recorder for those in the events photographed [emphasis mine]. This distinction is crucial.

The use I have attempted to make of this distinction has been to locate those people, extraordinary friends if you will, who, though aware of the world of limitation, have behaved in a manner contrary to the expectations of the limited mind. I then act as the recorder of their spirit. Unquestionably, I find great beauty in their freedom from sexual shame, their ability to display physical strength, the elegance of their agility, and their willingness to display love across the lines of age, race, and sexual orientation. The statement we make together is both a truth for now and for the future.

As Deepak Chopra said in Quantum Healing :

There is no more beautiful experience than when the world expands beyond it’s accustomed limits. These are the moments when reality takes on splendor.

Some minds are so cynical that they cannot envision a legitimate purpose in the creation of beauty as a map for the future. I reminded on such critic of what I had said in the introduction to Out of the Studio, where I wrote that I had made pictures I wished I had known as child, pictures of a world that I might, as a gay man, someday find. I told him I had received letters from young people living in isolation who thanked me for that thought. One young man wrote and confided that he was gay but had not been able to talk to anyone. He concluded his letter with these words:

This may sound corny but it’s the best way I can illustrate it. I see you as a stepping stone to see over the wall of “Who I am.”

The response of the cynic was, “Well, not every young man who goes to California will find himself at a swimming pool.”

Sadly, this observation is true. Too many young men, traveling west to find their fortune or to escape a world that has failed to support them, will find themselves hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard. This is a separate problem that needs to be addressed. And this is why it is also important that they be shown that their love is a beautiful possibility rather than a commodity. We need an idea of where we are going as well as help with the fare.

The making of these maps is, I believe, an artist’s highest calling. Richard Ellman describes Wilde’s idea of the potential of art with these words:

Life would repeat itself tediously were it not for the demonic changes art forces upon it… The artist makes models of experience which people rush to try out.

When we hear the echo of that voice which once called to us from a television commercial, saying, “Please don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” we should listen. Pierre Delattre pinpoints the flaw in the mind that would scorn beauty with a condescending attitude. “They have not yet recognized that they and we are the makers of our own undoing, so they haven’t yet begun to assume the responsibility of beauty-makers.”

I know of no greater man-created fault that the denial of man’s own power. If we imagine a better, more beautiful life for us all, we must take responsibility to make it happen, step by step, ourselves. As Dr Chopra has suggested:

We all have the power to make reality. Why make it inside boundaries when the boundless is so near?

In the exercise of this power, we manifest what is meant by the idea that we are created in God’s image. We have been given the gift of co-creators. We can deny this gift by sticking ourselves stubbornly to the problem, thereby becoming the problem, or we can use the gift to create beauty in and around ourselves in our every act.

And why should we take such care to understand, appreciate, and defend beauty? As a verse from the Veda says:

What you see, you become.