At first, a shocking diversity of people burn in to your brain. People in pain, people in distress, horrors of death and lust. But in between you ask yourself why?. Is this life? could this be our modern way of living? should it be? The work of Bruce LaBruce has unlimited layers but gives you none, or all the answers.

This description from the Peres Project exhibit (2002) gives us some insight on the artists intentions:

"LaBruce's photography, like his films, explores, exposes and ultimately challenges dominant cultural expectations of sexual behavior. He showcases radical sexual practices with underrepresented model "types" in order to question our attitudes on pleasure, pain, beauty, life and everything in between. His work assimilates strong influences from the world of high fashion and commercial advertising to the low cultural genres of pornography and trash TV. By constantly shinning a bright light into the dark crevices of human thought, LaBruce's work challenges societal norms and expands on notions of permissible thought. While often crude, rude, and decadent, LaBruce's work is unapologetic and ultimately achieves a level of beauty unique in contemporary photography." ( from Peres-projects.com )

His new movie The Raspberry Reich is at the Toronto international film festival on Sunday September 12th at midnight and on Friday September 17th at 9pm. After that it will be in New York on September 24th and subsequently in LA and San Francisco.

Info & images here