courtesy of Mass Gallery
David Hurles had the face of your youngest uncle. His eyes were soft, as was his demeanor. He looked sweet and sad, a wisp of a man with a wisp of a mustache. This is true.
It’s also true that David Hurles was a pornography pioneer. He lovingly photographed, videotaped, and audio recorded anyone who fit the profile of his affection: the roughest, rawest, most dangerous men he could find. Bonus points for any ex-military or ex-prisoners. If a man looked like he could beat someone to a pulp, that was the man for Hurles. He found pleasure in pain: the emotional pain of unavailable straight men, and literal pain at their hands as they beat and robbed him.
These dichotomies of sensitivity and desperation are all over the late photographer’s work. Now, for the first time since a 2010 John Waters-sponsored display, a careful curation of David Hurles ephemera is available for the general public to peruse. Beth Schindler of MASS Gallery collaborated with Hurles’ friends Dian Hanson and Christopher Trout to exhibit “Toxic Masculinity: The Old Reliable World of David Hurles,” which features not just a sample of the thousands of photos Hurles took in his lifetime, but artifacts including FBI summons, angry neighbor notes, prison pen pal correspondence, and even the box that initially held his cremains.
MASS gallery has gathered materials, condensed them to represent an entire life, and shown a clear-eyed look at a multifaceted man.
Hurles, who died in 2023 at the age of 78, was not considered an “artist” in his lifetime, but he was a pinnacle of the pornographic community. His wholehearted embrace of his passions – in a life statement displayed at MASS, Hurles declared that “I love these men, and I love what I do with them” – drew the admiration of fellow fringe artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman himself. What Schindler, Hanson, and Trout created in this exhibit highlights why Hurles spoke to others. They’ve gathered materials, condensed them to represent an entire life, and shown a clear-eyed look at a multifaceted man. Is it controversial? It can be. Is it enlightening? It can be.
Schindler set up her space in a counterclockwise progression through Hurles’ history. Turn right at the door and see strangely unassuming paraphernalia and pictures – even the ones with his giant dick on display seem somehow benign. There’s a re-creation of his desk, papers and Sucrets lozenges scattered around a screen showing a live feed from the mock living room setup in the opposite corner. There, a dingy couch and a carefully sourced striped towel mirrors the home spaces that Hurles used for his work.
photo by Cat McCarrey
Cases on the walls hold photos of models, musclebound men holding erections. Between the cases are posters designed by Christopher Trout and based on text from Hurles’ mail-order catalog. They’re a wry pastiche of Wild West wanted posters, with boudoir shots framing pithy paragraphs about the men in the photos. Most of them were drifters, hustlers, hopeless addicts, or lost youths. Hurles described them with titillating menace, arousal tinged with fear. He would send photo packs of these men in the mail, along with “jerk off” audio where the subjects, coached by Hurles, would hurl insults and slurs. You can listen to the recordings through MASS’s cassette player headphones, or watch similar videos in the gallery’s back room.
But it was Hurles’ mesmerizing writing that stole my attention. You aren’t really there for the pictures. I mean, you can be. You can get your fill of cock and balls. But what sparks are the stories, the relationships that Hurles is selling. Words housed in his pornography catalogs proved his gifted salesmanship. He knew how to make descriptions pop for an audience, but the snippets show what Hurles considered important in his own fetishization: the deep underbelly of his need for degradation. Each marketing blurb or letter illuminates the man behind the camera. Hell, even his ledger of personal loans displays a witty, blunt self-awareness in the way Hurles’ subjects would bleed him dry, even as he used them for erotic and financial satisfaction. It reminded me of St. Augustine’s Confessions, a voyeuristic and masturbatory recounting of sins. But where St. Augustine’s self-flagellation was meant to spotlight purity through repentance, for Hurles the confession alone was enough. This is who I am, it seems to say. For good or bad, for pleasure or profit, “Toxic Masculinity” is the work of authenticity.
MASS Gallery hosts a closing party for “Toxic Masculinity” on Feb. 21.
“Toxic Masculinity: The Old Reliable World of David Hurles”
MASS Gallery
Through February 23