GLR May-June 2025

the corruption of minors) but also for a veritable witch hunt for those who had disrobed and appeared before his lens. What were once visual traces of queer indulgence and playful image making transformed quite seamlessly into a body of evidence through which to track down and put on trial the behaviors and desires deemed immoral by the state. This dual function of photography—its ability to open worlds just as quickly as it could foreclose them—was well un derstood by the maricas (queers) who took up the camera or were captured on film. Images played a central role in the state’s early definition (read: pathologization) of “homosexu ality” and “sexual inversion” after the turn of the 20th century. The production of clinical photographs and mugshots gave vi sual credence to a range of medical and juridical practices aimed at controlling errant genders and sexualities. At times, these appeared in books or popular periodicals alongside for merly private, confiscated portraits, making explicit the perils of photographic representation during the period. In turn, what a sexological study, police report, exposé, or satirical writeup might suggest in so few words could be made all the more po tent in visual terms. But part of what makes Ballvé Piñero’s case so exceptional is the fact that, unlike the images that came before, his corpus of snapshots was neither disseminated in print nor subjected to public scrutiny. Instead, sensationalized descriptions of his parties were enough to fuel panic and para noia around gay debauchery in the capital. Even though the photographs in question have been shut away from view, we do know a few things about them. While conducting research for his 2020 book Cacería , a ground breaking account of this historical episode known colloquially as the “cadet scandal,” the author and playwright Gonzalo De maría was able to get his hands on the sealed photographs that remain from the 1942 case. Barred from reproducing these im ages, he instead transcribed Ballvé Piñero’s handwritten notes found on their versos and jotted down textual descriptions of each scene: (11) Sailor: Héctor G., friend of Ángel F. y Cía. Buenos Aires. Summer 1942. ( Wears the traditional seafaring uniform of the period. Slicked back hair. Smiles. In profile. ) (76) Buenos Aires. Winter 1942. Alfredo D. “Coco.” ( Nude torso, tousled hair, as if he just came out of the shower. Seated on the sofa. ) (97) Buenos Aires. Winter 1942. Antonio B.: who Ernesto had me waiting for in front of “My Fair” and who slept with me and Juan Carlos Ch. that night. ( Nude. The epigraph provided the court with proof of one of the rare cases of a threesome or group sex in the apartment on calle Junín. ) (262) ( No epigraph. The model is outstretched on the sofa. He covers his eyes and lifts his white shirt to show his genitals. Wears a necktie. ) Details such as the specificity of a notation or the clarity of a sit ter’s visage were far from inconsequential. The appearance of a pseudonym or scratched-out surname, the cropping of the body or concealment of one’s face, the pose depicted or act in sinuated—each of these features incriminated the models in Ballvé Piñero’s photographs, or spared them from police at tempts to identify and reprimand them. In the case of the mili

tary trainees made visible on film, it meant the difference be tween being punished and discharged from service or donning the uniform another day. Inspired by Demaría’s research into this erased history, in 2019 the photographer Claudio Larrea produced a series that speculatively recreated Ballvé Piñero’s homoerotic snapshots of the early 1940s (Figure 2). Los cuerpos del delito , a double entendre referring to “bodies of the crime” and “bodies of evi dence,” insists on the ways that masculine subjects and a desir ing gaze, here filtered through the camera’s lens, have been bound up in processes of surveillance and persecution. Larrea’s sensuous reenactments conjure the space of Ballvé Piñero’s apartment and the photographic and sexual encounters staged within it. Through the framing of suggestive nude bodies or pairs of play-fighting men, his images revive the queer fantasies that have been cast onto military bodies and (whether ac knowledged by the state or not) the non-heterosexual cadences of these institutions themselves. In Demaría’s book, he demonstrates how, for Ballvé Piñero and his co-conspirators, the intrigue with a man in uniform was little shy of a fetishistic one. A pickup artist involved in the “scandal” is said to have admitted to the arousal incited in him by a decorated uniform, which led him to seduce “draftees, sailors, guards—especially traffic guards—and nowadays, cadets.” Sonia, their friend and accomplice, confirmed that the group gravitated toward uniformed men in the police force and military, as these state agents “spent much of their time in the barracks” and were “those who most needed to satisfy their sex

Longing, 31 x 41 inches, acrylic on canvas ©2019 Bill Grainge

BILL GRAINGE More info at www.billgrainge.com

May–June 2025

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