GLR January-February 2025

on this photograph and Patric remarks that “he was a freak ”—a reference to his sexual disposition, and disrupting any narrow idea about who this man may be. He has a glint in his eyes as he recounts some of the raunchier memories—of muscular men bent over in bar bathrooms waiting for whoever entered—stressing that no matter how masculine someone appeared, what they en joyed when it came to sex could never be assumed. Looking at another image (below), Patric recalls: “These two look like regular guys, but you’d never know, they were rival gang members who would hang at the Rialto with this tough at titude ... but both were basically queens.” The landscape of Chicago through McCoy’s eyes is charged with the sexual en counters that transpired there. I return to Jose Esteban Muñoz’ essay “Ephemera as Evidence,” which describes queer experi ence as often existing through ephemera, “linked to alternate

eration of intellectuals who find it difficult to make forthright assertions. McCoy is clear that the pursuit of pleasure is central to the archive, while recognizing that each viewer will have their own experience. I hold onto the vitality of his conception not as a superficial reading of the separate images but as an affirmation of the relatedness of the men pictured to one another through their varied articulations of desire. I ask Patric what ignited his focus on Black men, and he swiftly replies: “Because those are the men I am attracted to. ... Photography was always taking second fiddle to having sex.” Photographer Ajamu X, in an interview titled “Promiscuous Archiving: Notes on the Joys of Curating Black Queer Lega cies,” elaborates on the “mischievous” potential of the term promiscuous as it relates to archives, noting the connection to the transient, sensuous, and playful aspects of Black queer his tories. For Ajamu, sexuality is often discussed within the archive while sterilizing it of the sex itself: “This is where the mess, sweat, dirt takes place. There is a refusal to talk about that ‘nasty’ stuff in public. ... We talk about sexuality but not the sucking, the fucking, and so on. We try to dress these things up nice and neatly. It still needs to be dirty.” Patric’s work is a mode of promiscuous archiving, layered with pleasure. Sex informs his acute attention to detail: “I was having a lot of sex, I was seeing a lot of men. ... I got to really develop an eye.” I take in the po tency of the images as Patric reflects on the broader interactions that accompanied them. Although most of the images are not ex plicitly sexual, they are latent with lust. A case in point is seen in the accompanying photo (below). The subject looks straight into the camera with fixed eyes and pursed lips, the light glints on his forehead and slicked back hair. Left hand raised and curled to gently touch his chest through a buttoned-down shirt, two rings adorn his fingers. His right arm cradles a bag that extends out of the frame. Even with the inten sity of his eyes, there is a softness in his stance.

modes of textuality and narrativity like memory and perform ance: it is all of those things that remain after a performance, a kind of evidence of what has transpired but certainly not the thing itself.” Embedded in McCoy’s portraits is a visual map ping of erotic desire for a generation of Black men in Chicago, the places they frequented, and the desires they pursued. To spend time with Patric McCoy with his photographs be side him, guided by his words, nurtures a textured insight that calls the archive to life through glimpses into memory. The mo ments that extend beyond the static image are conjured in my mind, infused with feeling by the dynamism of his reflections. So, while I first intended to approach this essay on McCoy’s photographic archive with the anxiety to “say something new” and delve into what may have been overlooked, I resolved sim ply to listen to what he said, to lean into the pushback he gave to certain questions, and allow the images themselves to tell the story. McCoy’s directness is generative, a rebuttal to the over thinking and parsed responses that have been trained into a gen

January–February 2025

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