The Team Cosmic Warrior series is an homage to the physique pictorial photographers and magazines from the Beefcake era. They played an important role in gay men’s culture in the 1950s, and later contributed to the Golden Age of bodybuilding. During this time, the American government considered homosexuals to be Communists, resulting in many men losing their employment, families, and futures due to this attack on their identity. These magazines became a secret code for gay men to identify each other in public. This resulted in the creation of an underground space for them to communicate and integrate into Hollywood’s new identity of the hetero masculine male that society adopted. My approach is to use internet sourced images, parody them with classical religious, iconic, metaphysical and spiritual symbolism, so that each one radiates a psychedelic frequency that is channeled through a homo-pop lens. They become the healers and queer spiritual warriors of the future.

Instagram: Team Cosmic Warrior

*image: Maison Depoivre Gallery - Positive Masulinities 2019
photo by Gabriele Cole