Miguel De (Ovar, 1992) has been developing work mostly in photography and video on issues of body representation, challenging notions of gender and sexuality, focusing on the male and gay body. In the representation of these bodies, the artist is suggesting, stressing and problematising normal assumptions of gay identity, through desire, gender and codes imposed by the community itself. Arde is his new photographic series and the primary subject of this conversation.

João Mourão – Let’s start this conversation without a helmet, that is, without protection. I would very much like this to be the approach to our dialogue. Entering a fire station which, after all, is a film set for a queer artist, is something fraught with preconceptions. But, before we get into a conversation about fetishization, notions of masculinity and representation of bodies, I’d like you to talk a bit about the context of Arde, a series you have developed from Fogo-Fátuo; the new film by João Pedro Rodrigues.

Miguel De – The photographic series Arde was the result of an invitation from the production team of João Pedro’s film for me to be on the set, in a completely free way, photographing whatever I wanted. It could be traditional film photography or something else. As an artist, I felt I had the opportunity to appropriate the film’s universe, its décors, actors and themes to continue my work with a new approach. My previous works already spoke about themes such as masculinity, homosexuality, and the body. So the symbiosis between João Pedro’s film and what I could create was too good not to take advantage of.

JM – As you say, your work has been looking at men. For me, your camera desires, in a reflection of your own desire. That desire arises a priori; in other words, it is external to you as it is defined by others. More directly: how can a series like this exist beyond the film? And what was it like to work with the pre-existent, despite the freedom you were given? How do you find that desire, which seems to me the spark for much of your work?

MD – Desire is quite present in my work, indeed. That is one of the triggers that makes me photograph. I capture what fascinates me, but also what I desire. In this specific case, I enter a place and a context beyond my control or decision. Only after that does my work begin. The series exists because of the film, but I believe it is not tied to it. In fact, I am more interested in the perspective of someone who doesn’t know or haven’t seen the film, because they will interpret the images differently. The series is not made to tell the story of the film, because the film already does that. To a certain extent, my camera, my view wanders, and floats over and through the elements of the film, decontextualised from its narrative. Therefore, the images acquire new meanings. For me, this was challenging, because I know – and people eventually also know – that the locations, objects, human figures were not decided by me. But I have the autonomy to choose what to photograph and how to do it. This is not quite different from reality, from everyday life: I don’t choose the people walking in the street or the objects lying on the ground. I find and photograph them. It’s the same here. There are many things that I didn’t photograph, or I photographed them but they are not in the series. My working method was not vastly different from the usual: I find something or someone that catches my attention, that I want, I study it and decide what image I want to make. And I do it. That desire is not necessarily sexual, but it is certainly erotic. I feel the urgency to freeze that image that I see in a photograph, because I know that it will cease to exist. And I want it to exist forever. Going back to the beginning of your question, in relation to the men I photograph, I think it’s the same thing: almost unconsciously, I know that those bodies will cease to exist. Or, at least, they will disappear from my life, from my day-to-day. I want to see and study them. So, I shoot them. It may be the reason why I have almost no images of my close friends and family.

JM – The idea of bodies disappearing or ceasing to exist in your life is tragic or, rather, disposable (without any moral judgment, of course). The consumer society devours bodies like it devours any other food. Much of your work is related to these codes of the representation of the male body as an image of beauty imposed on the gay community. One example is the Masc series, but also some of the images in this series. How do we step outside or problematize these images? How do we create subtleties in this performance of the perfect body? This also makes us address the fetishization of the uniform in the gay community; in this case, the fireman, perhaps a new gateway into your work.

MD – My first work, which resulted in the book Conhecer um Corpo, is mostly about bodies and spaces that exist and cease to exist. The word “disposable” is not the most appropriate, as I associate it with an idea of using something and throwing it away, without any emotional consequence. But that exists here: a sense of loneliness and melancholy is present in the images, a outcome of this vanishing. Arendt’s idea of the melancholy of societies has been recovered recently, which is an extrapolation of this individual melancholy, a limbo between being fine and depression that is very fascinating to me. This is one of the consequences of an individualistic, consumerist society that lives more through images. We are overwhelmed by them to the point that they all look the same. And, as you said, it’s important to step out and problematize them.

In my mind, there is a clash between imposed images of body beauty and the reality in front of the mirror, which goes far beyond desiring the other. It’s not only who we want, but also how we want to be. I use my artwork to try to free myself also from some obsessions of my adolescence. I believe there is a correlation between the muscular male body and the resignation to an assimilated heterosexuality. In other words, as a child and adolescent unable to understand homosexuality, who thinks that it is just a phase and is in denial, the traditional association between homosexuality and the feminine spawns an unconsciousness: if you present what is as traditionally masculine as possible (and a muscular man is traditionally more masculine than a skinny or fat guy), you are no longer homosexual. This argument is weak, but it existed in my head when I was a kid. The media shows us these images all the time. These are the bodies that sell, that are sexualised and commodified. There is value assigned to those bodies and taken away from others. And the complete assimilation, the mental break, that sigh of relief is in those bodies: “if I’m like that, if I have a body like that, I’ll be normal and happy”. Getting rid of this oppression and fully accepting our bodies in their endless diversity is extremely difficult. Maybe that’s why the bodies you see in the Masc series are those. They are bodies of people who answered the open call, who looked at their own bodies and said “you deserve to be photographed”.

The uniform fetishization is also related to this, to the burning desire for hypermasculinity. In my MA dissertation, which runs alongside the Masc series, I quoted two authors who disagreed about the eroticisation of the 1970s straight male figure by the so-called gay clone (or Castro clone). One of them said that this appropriation was a subversion, the other said that it was pure and hard desire. I think there are both variants. But I believe that much of this fetishization comes from a problematic longing for the hypermasculine, for the unattainable, for the authority figure that we don’t have or are. In Fogo Fátuo, and in the whole experience of photographing the Arde series, the fetishist side exists, but it is not obvious and is not of particular importance. The macho, muscular fireman is not eroticised, because the fireman suddenly starts dancing, he shows himself vulnerable. And it’s not just muscular men. There’s everything.