Anthony Goicolea

Description

Anthony Goicolea
Twin Palms Publishers (2004) – Hardcover, includes DVD

Anthony Goicolea’s debut monograph captures the disquieting beauty and complexity of adolescence through a lens both intimate and theatrical. Known for his meticulously staged photographs—where he often appears as multiple versions of himself—Goicolea transforms private spaces into psychological battlegrounds. Schoolboys smoke, wrestle, and conspire in scenes at once tender and transgressive, revealing an undercurrent of longing, identity, and rebellion.

Across these images, Goicolea unearths human weakness, awkwardness, and discomfort, circling themes of adolescent sexuality and self-discovery with unflinching honesty. His work blurs the lines between innocence and desire, humor and menace, reality and fantasy—inviting the viewer to confront the awkward tension between voyeurism and empathy.

This first book collects his early photographic series alongside five short films (included on DVD), which extend his fascination with vanity, narcissism, and the grotesque. Whether submerged in water, trapped in rituals of masculinity, or frozen mid-chaos in a holiday tableau, Goicolea’s figures embody both the fragile chaos of youth and the darker humor of growing up queer in a world obsessed with perfection.

“Exploiting his own boyish appearance, Goicolea clones himself in coming-of-age narratives that evoke both fondness and horror… desire is unfixed and sometimes alarmingly off-kilter.”

Beautifully printed by Twin Palms, this limited-edition hardcover stands as one of the defining art books of early 21st-century queer photography—provocative, unsettling, and unforgettable.