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    Gore, Decadence, and Sex in the Court of Herod

    Christopher Harrity
    10/24/18
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    Read more about photographer Qviron Lethebain's depiction of St. John the Baptist below.

    Qviron
      

    It's hard to say why Salome's dance and the beheading of St. John the Baptist have captured the imagination of so many gay artists over the years. Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Donatello have all been drawn to this biblical story of divorce, exhibitionism, and tones of incest.

    And there are wonderful and lurid film versions of the story, including the 1923 version by lesbian actress Nazimova, who famously spent a fortune on her silent version of the story by Oscar Wilde where she played Salome in costumes designed by Natacha Rambova. Rita Hayworth killed it as Salome in the 1953 version. Early in his career, Pedro Almodovar made a short, Salome, in 1972.

    Spanish photographer Qviron Lethebain has a particularly gothic take on the sordid story.

    Lethebain says, "I conceive my work from the point of view of an iconographer, of a faithful idolater who looks for the absolute answer in images. I see beyond. I fill every image with different meanings, put them in my inner world, transforming what I see and recreating precisely what I imagine. All of this makes me able to escape from anguish. I've faced my studies in visual arts as an initiation way, which can provide the tools to communicate these images that live in my silence. Theatre, design, photography, painting, art direction, costume cut and construction, dance, history ... all of these subjects help me to present my own world to the outer world. The world where I'm not alone. That world where I can see, at last."

    See more on his website and his Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram pages.

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    Christopher Harrity

    Christopher Harrity is the Manager of Online Production for Here Media, parent company to The Advocate and Out. He enjoys assembling online features on artists and photographers, and you can often find him poring over the mouldering archives of the magazines.
    Christopher Harrity is the Manager of Online Production for Here Media, parent company to The Advocate and Out. He enjoys assembling online features on artists and photographers, and you can often find him poring over the mouldering archives of the magazines.
    Read Full Bio