Art critic and curator Vince Aletti could be probably the most prolific collectors of print ephemera to have ever lived. What began in boyhood as a seemingly innocent habit of tearing pages from physique magazines to maintain under his mattress has matured into an insatiable appetite for provocative print. 

“Completely unaware of what it said about me, I subscribed to House & Garden once I was in middle school,” says Aletti. “I used to be each pretentious and clueless and like so many queer kids, I spent most of my free time in my bedroom reading. Paperbacks were the primary printed matter I collected. Later, it was anything related to Andy Warhol: film flyers, gallery posters, ads torn from art magazines.”

Now in his seventies, Aletti’s abiding compulsion to gather has him cohabiting with a whole lot of hundreds of pieces of original visual culture that climb the partitions of his East Village apartment in Recent York. But he wouldn’t have it every other way. “A magazine has presence,” says Aletti. “If it’s well designed, its contents have a flow and logic. Most if not all of that is lost online, even when a magazine is reproduced page by page on screen. Vintage magazines, like old books, have a scent I’d wish to bottle.”

Offering a rare glimpse into this personal archive, Aletti’s latest book The Drawer focuses solely on the contents of a single drawer in an antique flat file, stacked with over 40 years value of clippings, covers, plate sections and other pages torn from books and magazines.

A few of his vast inventory is categorised into magazine or theme. Stacks dedicated to American Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar organised by yr obscure one wall of the room, while patchworks of shorn prints, fashion editorials and ad pages are afforded their very own drawers in the cupboard. Nonetheless, the one in query was moderately more varied. “The drawer we photographed is more random and unpredictable, a catchall,” Aletti tells Dazed.

Polymathic in style, the 75 multi-layered compositions comprising The Drawer handsomely convene in a scrapbook-cum-autobiography that exists on the intersection of photography, commerce, and design. Erotic male bodybuilders sidle up against Peter Hujar portraits; Roy Lichtenstein comics with photobooth strips; Antonioni film stills with the bulging muscles of sports personalities. 

For Vince, all types of photography share a capability to attune to our collective histories. “It’s hard for me to separate these items,” he says. “Possibly because ultimately, it’s all personal and evocative… I ‘follow’ and admire a lot of photographers and artists; not all of them ended up in The Drawer but people who did are likely to crop up greater than once: Avedon, Warhol, Hujar, Godard, Sontag, Tillmans, Basquiat, Tom of Finland. Each embodies a cultural moment and suggests several more.”

In a deck of otherwise unlikely images, there may be a really specific, and as Aletti declares himself, “glaringly obvious” fascination which welds the whole lot together. “MEN,” affirms the collector. “I’m never not and occupied with men and the varieties of masculinity, from Rock Hudson to Drake.” The Drawer reads like an astounding catalogue of male beauty. One by which presentations of masculinity are experienced through a homosocial gaze.

“MEN… I’m never not and occupied with men and the varieties of masculinity, from Rock Hudson to Drake” – Vince Aletti

Shorn from context, basketball players and baby-faced models are afforded an anonymity that surfaces as voyeuristic playfulness. Though Aletti reminds us that the whole lot is open to interpretation. “From the start, I desired to keep The Drawer easy: an image book without text, captions, or explanations of any sort,” shares Aletti. “All of the relationships were spontaneous and ephemeral; none were preserved. I never considered narrative and if any surfaced, it was quickly covered up by latest material.” 

Aletti’s sleek interventions may throw up some familiar imagery, but he wants us to go away our predilections behind. He concludes, “I like walking through exhibitions and not using a checklist and just the work. I need The Drawer to be the same experience. Not a guessing game, but a sort of letting go: an immersion.”

For a more in-depth take a look at a few of the compositions from The Drawer take a glance through the gallery above. 

The Drawer is offered to buy here.

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