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Tom of Finland’s Death Anniversary Week Celebration, November 7 – 13, 2022 @dollphotostudio
My first exposure to Quaintance was in a Barnes & Nobles mail order catalog back in Indonesia. Books were (and are) my family’s thing. Whenever my dad went on business trips abroad, he’d bring back paleontology books for me since he knew I was crazy about dinosaurs.
What he didn’t know was that the twelve-year-old me was also into sexy men. And in that Barnes & Nobles catalog was a tiny thumbnail of Beefcake book by Taschen. The cover of the book was two sailors, one shirtless, the other one nude, atop a cliff, glistening under the sun.
I can’t recall when exactly I realized that George Quaintance was the artist, but that image stayed with me.
When I went to TOM House and saw the gorgeous craftsman staircase, the banister, and a gigantic painting by Quaintance hanging on the stair wall, I knew I had to stage a photoshoot there.
I wrote in my artist statement that Tom’s work not only influenced my artistic direction, but also my fetishes. One of those fetishes is uniform.
Tom drew plenty of men in uniforms, from military to mechanics, police to pilots, Canadian mounties to train conductors. He also loved to draw men in suits. And what are suits but another type of uniform?
What Tom almost never drew was Asian men. I think I only know one drawing of Tom that shows an Asian.
So, as an Asian, I made a point to use an Asian headsculpt, and have him be the one being serviced.
In this series inspired by a piece signed 1968, Hiro (Takeshi’s dad – you can see Takeshi in the “Reading Is for Lovers” photo series) is being blown by Sven, right in front of that almost life-sized, George Quaintance painting.
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Dollsexposed showcases queer erotica, kink, fetish, and activism through twelve-inch doll photography. Their adventures in the doll world began in 2011 before establishing a home on dollsexposed.com eleven years later.
Dollsexposed's works have been displayed at Seattle Erotic Art Festival and Los Angeles Leather Getaway.