David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York, 1978–79 [group]

Narrator: For each of these photographs, Wojnarowicz took a picture of one of his friends wearing a photocopied mask of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. The face on the mask is flat, and printed with very high contrast. In the photographs, it looks almost like a stencil—a tool Wojnarowicz would later use in graffiti, and then in his paintings. Cool and crude at the same time, the face seems both to stand out from the gritty New York City locations where the men pose, and to fit into them. This sense of simultaneous belonging and not belonging is appropriate for Wojnarowicz’s subject. The most famous line of Rimbaud’s poetry translates as “I is another.” Using deliberately ambiguous grammar, it is a statement of ownership over one’s feeling of displacement, a form of resistance to the ordinary. The nineteenth-century poet’s attitude of absolute rebellion appealed to Wojnarowicz enormously, as did his open homosexuality.

In the years leading up to these photographs, Wojnarowicz focused largely on poetry. In some sense, Rimbaud’s image gave him a point of entry into the visual arts. Wojnarowicz—who has been extremely important to a younger generation—played a similar role for artist Emily Roysdon.

Emily Roysdon: In no uncertain terms, David Wojnarowicz was the first artist that made me think that I could also be an artist.

Narrator: Roysdon made David Wojnarowicz in New York in an act of homage. Just like Wojnarowicz had photographed friends wearing a mask of Rimbaud, she took pictures of friends wearing a mask of Wojnarowicz.

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