Castration, penetration, domination, transformation, extrication... What are the desires and fantasies that bubble away beneath the skin of masculinity? What yearnings and cravings flood through men's veins, hidden beneath a sheath of composure and order? It is a question that many - particularly in the field of menswork - have asked and written about; but one that few have tackled visually. Adults in Wonderland, a retrospective of the work of regular Achilles Heel contributor Grace Lau, takes a first photographic peek at the man behind the man a ground-breaking tour through the veins of masculine desire.
Her images are transfixing; yet what shocks is not their bizarreness, but the sheer weight of their everyday ordinariness. A man in a red leather mask and studded dog-collar, mannequin head in each hand, stares into the camera like an uncertain adolescent, wondering if the flash has gone off yet. A square-jawed, hairy-chested, middle-aged banker, in blond wig and leather bodice, grimaces in concentration as he struggles to zip-up his thigh-length boots. A leather clad 'sub', strapped to a St. Andrew's Cross, dozes off for thirty winks. An audience of 'dolled up' transvestites stare with bemused disinterest at a transsexual stripper.
Hidden desires are everywhere in Lau's photographs, yet, ultimately, what these images reveal is neither their aberrancy nor their exraordinariness, but their fundamental humanity - and the accompanying text, relating Lau's experiences as 'court photographer' to the S/M scene over the past ten years, further humanises her subjects' sexual desire. In presenting the 'unpresentable', Lau's images inevitably deconstruct the myth of male sexuality as omnipotent - a myth that can only be sustained for as long as that sexuality remains 'unpresentable'. Yet in kicking the pedestal of unpresentability away, Lau's work is a significant step on the journey towards the re-humanisation of male sexuality.
Mick Cooper
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