Toxic Masculinity as Sexual Obsession

January 18—February 21
Opening: Jan 18, 7-10pm

Curated by Beth Schindler
Text by Dian Hanson 

Photographer David Hurles was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 12, 1944, just a mile from the Kentucky border. He described his family as aspiring to the middle class, though never quite making it, with five surviving children, a mother he loved, and a father he hated. His mother confessed he was the product of an extramarital affair, which gave him great comfort when confronting his homophobic father. David always knew he was gay, even when he didn’t know what gay was. He joined the Air Force after high school trying to “man up,” but quickly found communal showers a bad place to go straight. He confessed and received a general discharge. He had a little college, then followed a boyfriend to San Francisco in 1965. His first job was for Kelly Girl, perfecting the typing skills that made him a prolific, life-long diarist and letter writer. 

In San Francisco David met Hal Call, president of the west coast Mattachine society, the earliest gay rights organization. Hal introduced David to Conrad and Lloyd, owners of DSI Sales, the first company to successfully challenge laws against sending explicit male nudes through the mail. They introduced him to a photographer, who introduced him to Bill Voldemar, his first model. Following that shoot in 1968, Hurles became one of the first U.S. producers of explicit male nudes. 

The next year Hurles flew to Washington D.C. to meet H. Lynn Womack, another founding father of gay publishing. Womack fought the courts for years to launch Guild Press, producing posing strap physique magazines, even publishing from a mental hospital when the post office tried to shut him down. By the time David met him Womack had moved on to explicit sex shop digests and offered Hurles $100 per set. 

This is how Hurles began cruising the streets of first San Francisco, then Los Angeles, for the type of models he’d always desired. 

“Who is exciting?” he began our first interview in 2007. “There were bank robbers, strong-arm men and murderers. Would a person appeal to me more if he were straight? I have to say so. If he’d been to prison…ten extra points for that. I came to realize I was attracted to sociopaths.” In other words, toxic masculinity. 

Hurles’ tastes also tilted towards the sort of poor midwestern and southern boys whose remains might be found in the wreckage of a meth lab, with their dirty nails, home-inked tattoos, and slow country drawls. Once he established his Old Reliable photo studio, named, he said, after a brand of Victorian oil stove, he fixated entirely on hustlers, criminals, sociopaths, and violent red state boys. While other photographers worked at making saleable products, Hurles concentrated on getting close to the men who made him tremble. He confessed that when a photo was out of focus it signaled the degree to which a model aroused him, with the hottest subjects, say a tattooed, cigar-smoking psychopathic southern killer, making him shake

uncontrollably. “I never did well with models that weren’t my type,” he said, and his model releases reveal that states like Alabama, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, West Virginia, and yes, Texas, contributed disproportionately. He famously titled a video of masturbating uncut country boys Arkansas Luggage, the idea being that their only possessions of value were contained in that skin. 

Hurles did not consider himself an artist, yet he thought like an artist and worked like an artist. He used available light at all times, to softly caress his hard subjects. He preferred black and white film to highlight this effect, though shot color slides to submit to magazines. He never had a studio, preferring to bring his models into his own home - wherever that might be, as he was frequently evicted for crimes the men committed in his apartments. A chart found on his hard drive following his 2008 stroke listed 43 residences during his 40 year career. 

In the 1980s Hurles added audiotape and video to his oeuvre. The audiotapes were created by leaving a model alone in a room with a tape recorder, encouraged to say whatever he wanted, including threats against Hurles himself. 

Yes, he enjoyed being the victim as well as the chronicler of toxic masculinity. As time passed Hurles lost touch with old friends and family and lived entirely within the chaotic, criminal world of his models. He was arrested himself, and became an enabler of his beloved sociopaths’ transgressions. He learned he liked meth, and the toxicity enveloped him inside and out. 

When I met Hurles in 2007 his cameras had been stolen; the beautiful Hollywood home he’d bought at the height of his late ’80s prosperity had been repossessed; even his teeth were lost to meth. He lived in a single, dirty room on a sketchy street, but had managed to protect the most precious asset: his complete creative archive, packed into a storage unit. 

His massive stroke occurred while shooting meth with his last, straight, criminal partner. I cared for him in a nursing home until his death in April, 2023, and care for his archive to this day. This is the first show of Hurles’ work since 2010, when fan John Waters mounted a show at his own New York gallery to help pay medical bills. 

Hurles sacrificed all on the altar of toxic masculinity; and to his dying breath claimed he regretted nothing.