New York based, Russian-born photographer Slava Mougtin creates something between portraiture and pornography. Overtly sexualised, his work often depict buff boys engaged in acts of arousal and fetish. His installation and photographic work effortlessly obliterates sex/gender stereotypes, to present new, masculinised and hyper-masculinised portrayals of mid-20s gay men. But his boys are more than just a personification of homoerotic hetero male bicuriousness. They are paradoxically challenging the fag persona, the dominant homosexual identity, while subtly (re)presenting aspects of that identity. Mogutin’s obsession with queer ‘straight’ guys and turning them into sex objects is paramount to his masculine homosexual idea. His main objects of desire are jocks, skaters, thugs and wiggas, His boys are quintessential of this fashion and lifestyle, often skaters, always lean and regularly well built and muscular. And because they are presented as…
