Arthur Tress (b.1940)

Arthur Tress (b.1940) YMCA FANTASY, 1980. Vintage silver gelatin print, image size 264 x 257, sheet size 355 x 280mm, signed, titled, dated, dedicated 'For Emmanuel', and annotated 'A.P.' by the photographer in green ink lower margin recto, with various struck-through annnotations verso, and numbered 12.15. Framed, frame size 400 x 375mm. Provenance: The artist direct to Emmanuel Cooper (1938-2012). Emmanuel Cooper was a British potter, writer, and LGBTQ rights activist who published widely on homosexuality in Western art and the male nude in photography; his groundbreaking title 'The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West' was published by Routledge in 1986. The present image by Arthur Tress, titled 'YMCA Fantasy', was gifted to Cooper by Tress and dedicated to him in the lower margin, after the inclusion of Tress's work in 'The Sexual Perspective'. Cooper would also go on to write the introduction for Tress' 1988 publication "Machinations"; correspondence between Cooper and Tress related to 'Machinations' is now held in Cooper's visual arts/political archive the Bishopsgate Institute Collection, London.