Days of 1957
Titled in a nod to C. P. Cavafy’s memory poems, this work echoes his way of holding specific years as charged containers for youth, risk, and erotic looking. Like Cavafy’s young men, sunburnt “at the baths and on the beach”, this magnificent model appears briefly redeemed by light and water within the fragile safety of a walled enclave where queer desire could surface without scrutiny. The embroidered water’s surface recalls Cavafy’s “images of sensual pleasure,” the way a stretch of sea or shore can ignite memories and fantasies of touch. Held in a state of luminous suspension, the model becomes a quiet act of remembrance that refuses to let the hidden summers slip out of history.
Bob Mizer took this photograph of Richard Dubois posing in the Hollywood mansion featured in Sunset Boulevard.
