Peter McGough: Alphabet

Limbs twist and fold around each other in this delightfully queer cyanotype alphabet made up of nude male bodiesFor this playful and intimate artist’s book, American artist Peter McGough shaped nude male models into sculptural renderings of each letter of the English alphabet, creating 26 lush, deeply queer cyanotype images of their poses. The cyanotype, a slow and cameraless photographic process—and one of the oldest ways of making photos—engages light only in the spectrum of ultraviolet and blue, creating spectral, painterly images that reflect what cannot be perceived by the naked eye. The result is an inky photo transfer, which appears much like a black-and-white image, but on a bluescale. The 26 images in McGough’s Alphabet draw on Hellenistic sculpture, queer histories and the material quality of the cyanotype to create a graphic language all McGough’s own. Peter McGough (born 1958) has collaborated with David McDermott since 1980 as part of the artist duo McDermott & McGough, which is known for their anachronistic “time experiments.” He is also the author of the 2019 memoir I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s.