The “King of Fetish” Revisits the Golden Age of Zines

Back in 1987, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rick Cas­tro got a copy of ​“Boy Tito”, a crude­ly made zine that came with a cas­sette tape with one bar: ​“I’m a bisex­u­al punk rock­er” screamed over and over. ​“I still have it,” Cas­tro says, a tes­ta­ment to the zine’s unlike­ly stay­ing pow­er. For with­in this hum­ble Xerox­ed pam­phlet lies some­thing more: a net­work of com­mu­ni­ties con­nect­ed through a shared love of DIY publishing. 

Now in the new exhi­bi­tion and cat­a­logue, Copy Machine Man­i­festos: Artists Who Make Zines, cura­tor Drew Sawyer and edu­ca­tor Bran­den W. Joseph look back at this rad­i­cal chap­ter of under­ground pub­lish­ing. Tak­ing root in the 1970s punk explo­sion, zines quick­ly became the medi­um of choice for artists, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, and writ­ers across the avant-garde. 

Organ­ised chrono­log­i­cal­ly, Copy Machine Man­i­festos presents an expan­sive look at the ways in which zines helped shape cre­ative prac­tices and com­mu­ni­ties, bring­ing togeth­er works by coun­ter­cul­ture icons like Cas­tro, Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon, Mark Gon­za­les, Ryan McGin­ley, and Dash Snow, to name just a few.

Deft­ly blend­ing con­cept and tech­nique, zine­mak­ers reimag­ined the print­ed object as a mas­ter­ful assem­blage that com­bined the anar­chy of Dadaism and the glam­our of Pop Art. Seiz­ing the means of pro­duc­tion via the rapid expan­sion of copy shops, artists forged a grass­roots indus­try that soon found its way into inde­pen­dent book­shops like A Dif­fer­ent Light and Tow­er Books.

The zine scene cre­at­ed an alter­na­tive space for those out­side the main­stream. ​“The West Hol­ly­wood gay bar scene was very lim­it­ed in the 80s,” Cas­tro remem­bers. ​“It was basi­cal­ly the Cas­tro (as in Street) mous­tache clone or prep­py white boys that didn’t allow any oth­er queer sen­si­bil­i­ty. Find­ing your fel­low freaks was real­ly dif­fi­cult so zines became a way to meet like mind­ed queers.”

Cas­tro got into the scene back in 1991 at SPEW, the first zine con­ven­tion in his home­town of Los Ange­les. He got a booth and laid out Zack, an expres­sion of his pas­sion for street hus­tlers, fetish, and bondage, along­side fel­low com­pa­tri­ots like Vagi­nal Davis and Bruce LaBruce. It proved the per­fect place for Castro’s vision of male beau­ty and desire at a time when mere homo­eroti­cism was derid­ed as ​“pornog­ra­phy.”

“Ini­tial­ly, fetish real­ly threw peo­ple off and I didn’t get any kind of main­stream recog­ni­tion, which is fine” says Cas­tro, who got his start as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er in 1986 while work­ing as a styl­ist for leg­ends like Herb Ritts, George Hur­rell, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

“We just did it our­selves and took plea­sure in know­ing we didn’t have to wor­ry about cen­sor­ship,” he con­tin­ues. ​“Each per­son was doing their own per­son­al­i­ty through their zine. What was excit­ing is we were all meet­ing each other.”

The con­nec­tions sparked col­lab­o­ra­tions of their own, with Cas­tro con­tribut­ing to Davis’s Fer­tile La Toy­ah Jack­son zine under the alias ​“Beu­lah Love.” Decades lat­er, zines are final­ly being giv­en their prop­er due, their ephemer­al nature only adding to their val­ue as rare works pre­served by the most dis­cern­ing of collectors.

Cas­tro describes com­ing upon a per­fect­ly pre­served issue of Fer­tile La Toy­ah Jack­son at the Brook­lyn Museum‘s recent zine con­ven­tion and mar­veling with delight, ​“It was like an heirloom.”

Copy Machine Man­i­festos: Artists Who Make Zines is on view through March 31 2024, at the Brook­lyn Muse­um. The cat­a­logue is pub­lished by Phaidon.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on X and Insta­gram.

Sup­port sto­ries like this by becom­ing a mem­ber of Club Huck.