James Bidgood born 28 March 1933James Bidgood (born in Madison, Wisconsin) is a US photographer and filmmaker. His photography work, at its best in the 1950s, featured young men in fantastical scenes. His work was an inspiration for photographer/artists Pierre et Gilles, whose style is very similar - heightened colour; elaborate backdrops, sets and props; a painterly, unreal sense of artifice with a strong erotic undertone.
As a filmmaker he produced the film Pink Narcissus (1971).
Pink Narcissus rocked the underground film world with its dreamlike homoerotic images. A technicolor fantasia, it is the story of a beautiful, brooding hustler (Bobby Kendal), who creates a dream world inside his apartment where he acts out his fantasies, from harem boy to roman slave to matador. Pink Narcissus' writer and director was credited as 'Anonymous', and rumours flew that the film had been made by a big name in Hollywood who feared exposure. For a time the film was erroneously credited to Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger.
It was later revealed that the director was James Bidgood, who had taken his name off the film because he did not like what the distributor had done with his work.
2005 interview with James Bidgood in Bright Lights Film Journal
