Victor Arimondi: Rush

Edition of 200

36 pages

Designed by John Patrikas

Text by Christopher Barnard

 

Victor Arimondi (1942-2001) was a photographer, artist, and model born in Bologna, Italy to a single mother during World War II. He began modeling while studying in Stockholm in the 1960s, but eventually found his calling in photography by the early 1970s. Initially, his subjects were friends, lovers, and even strangers whom he would befriend and convince to sit for him at his studio in the Norrmalm neighborhood of Stockholm. He photographed the artists, actors, and bohemians he knew in Sweden and abroad, as in his famous portraits of a young Grace Jones in Paris. Arimondi's work, particularly the louche, sensual nudes of young men, caught the eye of Bill Como, the Editor-in-Chief of After Dark, a New York entertainment and nightlife magazine that catered to the cosmopolitan gay reader of the decade. At Como's encouragement, Arimondi moved to New York in 1979 to capitalize on the commercial and editorial work available there. In addition to After Dark, he regularly shot for The Advocate and gay adult magazines like Honcho, Mandate, and Blueboy, as well as ads for the department stores like I. Magnin. After publishing his first photobook, The Look of Men (Eurasia Press, 1980), Arimondi moved to San Francisco in 1981, where he met Don Hershman, a physician and painter. The couple were together for eighteen years until Arimondi's death from AIDS-related complications in 2001. His infatuation with his subjects is described by Hershman as a visceral response to his creative drive: a rush of feeling, inspiration, and lust. The selection of photographs included in Rush: A Collection of Nudes by Victor Arimondi were acquired by New York Life Gallery in 2023 from the estate of Bill Como and are believed to have been taken during the photographer's time in Sweden.