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"This page began one night when I went to my first Mexican wrestling match," Bern Boyle wrote in '81. Losing luchadors have to unmask themselves; if an unmasked wrestler loses again, his hair is immediately shaved off after leaving the ring, as a sign of humiliation.
Bern Boyle grew up in Philadelphia, where in 1973 he helped to found Gianovanni's Room, the nation's oldest and largest LGBT bookstore and community center. He's also credited with founding the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival in 1976, now known as the Frameline Film Festival. In the '80s, living in New York City's East Village, he was involved in the mail art scene and, for a time, Bern Boyle Postcards was a fixture at 256 East 10th Street. In 1986, he was diagnosed with AIDS, which compelled him to chronicle his own deterioration with once-a-day photobooth sessions. This led to his "Photomaton" show at the Pyramid Arts Center in Rochester, NY (November 1987-January 1988), the first compilation of artists working with photobooth technology. He's especially well known for his photography of roadkill, street art and street scenes in Alphabet City, as well as Coney Island performer Michael Wilson (aka "The Illustrated Man"). Boyle was featured in "Silence = Death," the important 1990 documentary on AIDS art activism in New York. Bern Boyle died of AIDS-related complications on June 17, 1992.
Artist's Process noted in catalogue: The 35 mm. photograph taken with telephoto and flash attachement, was blown up to 14" x 17" and fed through the Xerox copier.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+1986.71.5 |
