Open – Free theme, 1st Prize
This project, entitled Where The Boys Are, takes its name from the Connie Francis song about longing and young love. Consisting of large scale photographs and appropriated imagery, I use gay iconography and specific references to the 1950s, 60s and 70s, to examine life before the AIDS epidemic. This project highlights the innocence and naivety of a lost generation.
The repression and fear gay men faced during this time eventually culminated in the “Stonewall riots.” By making new photographs and reworking images from the past I am cataloging and emphasizing a neglected history, one that is imbued with my own fantasies of a place and time which I never lived through.
I was born at the height of the AIDS crisis. My uncle died shortly thereafter from HIV complications. I have no recollection of who he was or what he looked like. My work investigates the lives of men like my uncle who have faded from our memory.
Pacifico Silaano
