The American photographer, based in New York, shatters binary perceptions of gender, identity, and sexuality. Through his portraits—at once intimate and exuberant, queer and neoclassical, timeless and hypermodern—Michael Bailey-Gates playfully, humorously, theatrically, and sensually reimagines human relationships. His models? Celebrities, models, or longtime friends. The settings, the poses, the gazes, the objects, the makeup, the costumes… everything draws us into visual narratives where man and woman, masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual are no longer confined to the reductive framework of ready-made definitions that reinforce the conventions dictated by society. While his works often reference other photographers and artists, Michael Bailey-Gates primarily sets aside the exploration of existential dramas in favor of exploring happiness. In his first exhibition and monograph, A Glint in the Kindling In 2021, this young man in his thirties casts his unique and radiant gaze on being, gender, and the binary, existing simultaneously as both subject and photographer. His self-portraits reveal beauty in all its simplicity. Like Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, Michael Bailey-Gates, in turn, affirms his vision of human individuality and the ever-evolving new ways of being, playing with categorizations and the superficiality of terms. He seizes space, elevates his world, disregards the cynicism of prejudice, and offers not a new perspective but an alternative, allowing those he captures to live before his lens according to their desires, dreams, and fantasies.
Nathalie Dassa
