James Alan Bidgood (March 28, 1933 – January 31, 2022), also known by the pseudonym Les Folies des Hommes,[1] was an American filmmaker, photographer and visual and performance artist, known for his highly stylized and homoerotic works.
[2] His artistic output embraced a number of media and disciplines, including music, set and window design, and drag performance.
His photographs are distinguished by an aesthetic of high fantasy and camp, inspired by an early interest in Florenz Ziegfeld, Folies Bergère, and George Quaintance.
He wanted to bring artistry to gay male erotic photography, believing that the genre at the time he started out had not been pushed to its limits.
He explained in a 2005 interview: [•••] one day I [asked] why are all these boys standing in front of the same frigging fireplace with the same funny little piece of jersey over their dingies?
One excerpt of an orgy scene from the film can be seen in the 1975 porn documentary "Good Hot Stuff," which showcases the footage under the working title "Baghdad.
[7] When a profile on Bidgood was written by Artforum in 2019, the author noted that at the time of publishing the piece, he "lives in poverty in New York City.
In a profile of the artist published in Aperture, Philip Gefter wrote, Necessity was the mother of invention for Bidgood, who created elaborate photographic tableaux in his small midtown Manhattan studio apartment.
His first erotic series was an underwater epic called Water Colors, made in the early 1960s, in which he used a dancer from Club 82 named Jay Garvin as his subject.
He coated Garvin with mineral oil and pasted glitter and sequins to his skin so the silver fabric under photographic lights would reflect on his body like water.