Visualizing Homoeroticism: The Photographs of Robert Gant, 1887–1892

Abstract

How did 19th-century men understand and represent their same-sex desires in a time and place where homosexuality was publicly unnamable? In partial answer to this question, this article focuses on two photograph albums assembled by Robert Gant in New Zealand during the 1880s. It explores the themes implicit in these albums, and suggests that men like Gant could piece together homoerotic subjectivities by creating and collating visual materials. Gant's pictures, like those of his overseas contemporaries, evoked multiple meanings and encouraged sexually unorthodox readings of masculinity, bodies, clothing and expressions. Early photography, then, provided a complex site within which an unnamable sexuality could take shape.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Annabel Cooper, Chris Hill and Paul Hockings on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

While the Masterton township had similar numbers of males and females in its population, the surrounding rural area was heavily weighted in males' favor: Wairarapa West County was home to 5725 people, 3172 of whom were male, and Wairarapa East County had 1470, 1050 of whom were male [Census of New Zealand 1881: 2].

This pose—in its slouch against the doorway, in particular—also prefigures 20th-century representations of the “cruiser,” the man seeking sex with other men in the spaces of the city. See Turner [2003: 63–66].

The Evening Post, a Wellington newspaper, also drew this connection [Evening Post 1870].

On the complex relationships between homoeroticism, spiritualism and a “cosmic consciousness” in late 19th-century Britain, see Cocks [2003: ch. 5].

For a thoughtful discussion on the extent to which New Zealanders drew on cultural influences from Great Britain, Australia and North America, see Fairburn [2006].

During the 1880s, some homosexual activity was illegal in New Zealand: sodomy, defined in terms of penetrative anal sex, and sexual assault. It is worth noting that consenting sex that did not involve anal penetration was not illegal until a legal change in 1893; same-sex intimacy, per se, was never legally proscribed. As a result, there was nothing illegal about any of Gant's photographs. On the laws applicable at the time, see Brickell [2008: ch. 1].

Robb offers a fascinating discussion of the connections between fairytales and homoeroticism in the work of Hans Christian Andersen. The fairytale, Robb suggests, was a “magic cloak” that permitted unspeakable sexual differences to be masked and then reconfigured into a culturally acceptable form [Robb 2003: 220–24].

Ibson suggests that in America there was little anxiety about “effeminacy” among men before the turn of the 20th century. This seems to have been much the same for New Zealand as well, provided cross-gender appearances were considered “playacting” [Ibson 2002: 75; Brickell 2008: chs. 1–2].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Brickell

CHRIS BRICKELL is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Otago University. He has published widely on the history and sociology of sexuality, including the book Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand [Auckland: Random House, 2008].