Walking the Line

Following are excerpts from the preface of Walking the Line: Photographs by Joe Ziolkowski, a book dedicated to “all men who have challenged and broken the social codes that bar them from loving other men.”

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Joe Ziolkowksi’s figures, tautly framed in empty space, obey a choreography that stems not from the formalized codex of ballet or pantomime, nor that of sportive gesture.

Instead, they display a need for expression that is more restrained and lyrical than exalted and emotional and that appears as authentic self expression.

This nakedness draws us indeed towards the bodies themselves, but the situations are bestowed with something timeless, something elementary. The figures are athletically youthful, like those of a frieze, yet are not exaggerated or exotic sculptures. Almost puritanically the viewers’ concentration is focused on the present body in its entirety. This allows the viewer an identification – although one without clues to time and space.

Joe Ziolkowksi’s work mirrors a richness of feelings. It is a speechless, physical art, directed at signal-like gestures and elementary poses. In a contemporary landscape of voyeurism, it enables a clear vision of an eroticism that is determined by feelings, rather than sexual passion. . . . His theme is the psychic condition of people, which he displays allegorically, sometimes emphasized by a title.

. . . Ziolkowski does not isolate the bodies, but makes them bearers of a sensual self-affirmation, with a subsequent claim to the right of communication. Contrary to George Platt Lynes, whose nudes act upon a stage of desire, these nudes are accessible. They are not an expression of aestheticism, but are articulations of erotic yearning coupled with moral circumstance.

– Peter Weiermair


To visit Joe Ziolkowski’s website, click here.