Hard Rocks, Soft Bodies (installation)

Body. Rock. Water. Painted by the Yonkers-born artist, George Daniell (1911-2002), the first image in this installation is a watercolor painting (see below). It is based on his 1930s photo series Ludlow Boys, which documents young men swimming on the nearby shore of the Hudson River. This overlooked series connects to the history of homoerotic imagery in art and can be compared to the work of the collective PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margret French) from around the same time. Daniell’s series has inspired photographers like Bruce Weber, and his work can be seen in Weber’s book All American Stories. Copies of this chapter have been made accessible in the installation so that you can view the Ludlow Boys photographs.

What makes Daniell’s series significant beyond the skillful composition is his bravery in capturing the male form at a time when being outed could lead to persecution. Artist Christoph Sawyer was immediately drawn to this beautiful imagery when first encountering his work at the Hudson River Museum in 2020. In subsequent years, he sought to better understand Daniell’s work in relation to the canon of gay male photography.  

This installation also features a new series of works by Sawyer, consisting of self portraits taken on the rocky coast of Deer Isle, Maine, near his family’s hometown and where Daniell chose to retire. This new series, Hard Rocks, Soft Bodies is directly inspired by and an homage to Daniell’s Hudson River photographs. Echoing the elements of the male form, rocky shores, and natural landscapes so prominently featured in Ludlow Boys.

Each of Sawyer’s six images has been laser etched onto a variety of mediums such as fluorescent-painted plywood, corduroy fabric, and watercolor paintings. In his self-portraits, he contorts his own body to emulate the traditional poses of the male form found in homoerotic art. In each of these images he has used an acrylic mirror in the original image, identical to the ones on display that have been laser-etched. This work explores themes of queerness, the body, sexuality, and nature. With each image, the forms of the body and the forms of the natural landscape blur into one another, with only the sharp edges of the mirror creating a definition.