Sharkey
Jager‘s studio, founded in 1976 in Chicago, specialized in soft-core pornography featuring casually posed black male models. His photographs, stripped of the fantastic scenarios frequently contrived in erotica, were included in self-published magazines unabashedly titled Black Sugar, Black Roots, Black Fever, Black Knights, Black Gold, Black Stars, and Black Thunder. In their nonchalant sexuality and unairbrushed immediacy, brazen images such as those issued by Jager‘s studio became popular in underground circles in the 1970s and 1980s, and set the stage for Robert Mapplethorpe and others to push boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality.
Artwork Details
- Title: Sharkey
- Artist: Jim Jager (American, 1933–1981)
- Date: 1980
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 35.5 x 27.9 cm (14 x 11 in. )
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Bequest of Winthrop Edey, 1999
- Object Number: 1999.367.7
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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