The pomegranate has carried transgression across millennia. In the Greek myth, Persephone eats pomegranate seeds and is condemned to live between two worlds, earth and the underworld, belonging fully to neither. Across cultures and centuries, the fruit recurs weighted with the same: desire and its cost.
This man was photographed by Cavalier studio, circa 1955. He is otherwise unnamed. In that decade, desire like his was criminal. Many gay men lived as he did — publicly performing lives that society dictated, privately inhabiting lives they could not name. Always moving between worlds. Always being pushed back.
The pomegranate above him is overripe. It has long been suspended. The release from that divided life would take decades more.
The pomegranate has carried transgression across millennia. In the Greek myth, Persephone eats pomegranate seeds and is condemned to live between two worlds, earth and the underworld, belonging fully to neither. Across cultures and centuries, the fruit recurs weighted with the same: desire and its cost.
This man was photographed by Cavalier studio, circa 1955. He is otherwise unnamed. In that decade, desire like his was criminal. Many gay men lived as he did — publicly performing lives that society dictated, privately inhabiting lives they could not name. Always moving between worlds. Always being pushed back.
The pomegranate above him is overripe. It has long been suspended. The release from that divided life would take decades more.
