Life On The Margins: The gay subculture and the recession generation

Brandon and Dakota

photos by Josh Olsen // otterj.com

story by Matt Pizzuti

Diego and Roberto

photos by Josh Olsen

a story of the moment:

To a generation of gay urban-dwellers who were just starting “adulthood” in 2008, the economic downturn came like a thief in the night – unexpected, unwelcome, and mostly unregarded.

Without established careers, mortgages, and in most cases without children to feed, most of our generation of queer young adults were personally unfazed when headlines of economic cataclysm rolled out. Millions of job losses and home foreclosures were horrible, but that wasn’t our story. Though the highest unemployment and underemployment rates fell squarely on those under 30, to us the recession seemed to mean – at worst – having to spend an extra one or two years with the life we’d already been living during college or our early 20s.

It meant working irregular part-time hours – maybe waiting tables or bartending, maybe night jobs, doing things we didn’t think of as a permanent “career” (that word that had always lived vague in a future now pushed back a bit farther). It meant driving a used car or taking the bus, renting apartments with roommates, weekends staying out late and sleeping in, thinking and re-thinking college or grad school (but not knowing what to go for), internships, the freedom to relocate spontaneously, trying on different neighborhoods or towns – slipping into their streets and seeing whether we wore them well.

Raising children in those circumstances would be hard, as is getting older or facing an expensive health issue. But, while for some young gay men recession was an inconveniently-slow career entry, for a bunch of us there’s an appeal in an adventurous life outside the confines of a 9 to 5, outside home ownership or being tied town by our “stuff.” (The sentiment has always existed out there, but now with fewer regrets about living it.)

It meant idle time and energy to put toward independent projects we may not know exactly how to make money from – with little to invest in them, but little that would be lost if they don’t go anywhere. There are other kinds of payoffs. Creativity is the dream.

Denver photographer Josh Olsen, 34, treaded lightly at first when he began publishing photos – “documenting my naughty otter antics and the company I keep,” his photo blog at otterj.com describes – on the web.

Olsen said his images are part erotica, part documentation, of a particular gay subculture based on a rugged unkempt look. (“Otter” is a term that can be subject to interpretation, but Olsen describes “a slender, fit, hairy gay man. Rambunctious, oftentimes younger.” Some people see it as a slimmer variation of the Bear community, but in practice it seems to be as much about style and aesthetic as the body itself.)

    John, on plastic turf            Jay through the window

“As long as I can remember, I’ve had a camera in my hands,” Olsen said. Raised in Ogden, Utah, Olsen came to Denver about a decade ago. Three years ago a friend suggested a challenge – “to start a Tumblr account and start putting (his pictures) out there for the world,” Olsen said. It was to document, with photographic proof, the stories he’d tell about his friends and what they were like when they got together.

Since the 1990s, the digital age has been making it easier to be creative and show it to the world. There’s nothing new saying that, but over the last four years especially, the options for artistic or literary trial–and–error have exploded: A “blog” is no longer a funny-sounding word (and cyberspace is riddled with forgotten ones’ corpses), Facebook evolved into everybody’s living room, digital photography became ubiquitous, and new platforms – Tumblr, instagram, Pinterest, Twitter – brought new opportunities to share a creative spark with an audience. Going viral means moving from obscurity to acclaim in an instant; its promise is our generation’s take on the lottery ticket, though “success” could mean much less than that. And not only are these things possible now, not only is exposure a mere click away, but it’s all free.

And nowadays there’s less disincentive of professional risk by taking your art to the edge.

Maybe it was through our own biases that we saw a populist quality in Olsen’s photographs; he said he never intended to make a statement about economic class or anti-elitism, calling it, instead, “documentary style,” though he’s happy to describe the scene he photographs as “alternative.” In 2000, Olsen began attending the Art Institute for photography, but didn’t stay there. “It was too commercial,” Olsen said. “I can’t see myself taking pictures of families or weddings or portraits. I’d rather photograph naked hairy men. I’m fascinated by the gay ‘subculture,’ it’s where I fit in.”

Roberto on the pool table

    Diego, the muse            Robbie on the balcony

What Olsen’s photography is for certain, though, is provocative. It’s a reminiscent of a thread between many “alternative” gay culture-setters – present and past, from great to mundane – combining an artistic context with unmodified realism, eroticism, subversiveness and grit: Allen Ginsberg (poet), Ryan McGinley (photographer), BUTT Magazine (magazine, website), East Village Boys (blog). Olsen said he fell in love with gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work since he discovered it as a teenager, and looks up to Herb Ritz and Keith Haring.

“I guess all my influences have been provocateurs,” Olsen said, “pushing the envelope. Robert Mapplethorpe was explicit, but the quality – wow.”

The images Olsen takes are out there (pun intended) on the Internet, but the artist, as well as the unruly bunch he loves to photograph, calculates that they won’t suffer personally and professionally for being associated. Since colleges and career counselors warn people to be careful putting even seemingly-innocuous information on Facebook profiles, the number of locals willing to show up on Otter J, in ways that can be far more of a liability than your typical “overshare,” is notable.

In this culture, evidently it’s the idea of the career or life that would be risked by this sort of expressive freedom – not the digital record that would put it at risk – that feels like “baggage.”

We’re in the middle of a dramatic cultural shift, especially in Colorado. The move toward suburban sprawl reversed with a renewed interest in cities. Over the last decade, being gay has gone from an “issue” that politics tiptoed around, to a legitimate public identity. In a shorter period, Colorado has gone from red state to blue. Maybe this all is because of increasing racial diversity in America; the arrival of a multiculturalists’ generation that was always destined to change things. Maybe it’s a society that just got plain fed up with the Religious Right; both the right and the left have become more libertarian in reaction to the Bush years. Or maybe it’s that Denver’s population is reaching a critical threshold of size that we’re suddenly more “urban,” a real city like never before.

In any case, with the change comes a tolerance – or at least expanded niche – for the expressive, eccentric or deviant. It’s safer than ever to come out at work. There’s less chance of putting a future (or current) career at risk by, say, smoking pot, having a highly-visible tattoo or piercing, drinking in front of the boss – the list could go on – or showing up wearing only underwear (and less) on a prominent local art blog, plus around town on calendars, cell phone cases or t-shirts Olsen sells online featuring his photographs.

There’s a recipe for a thriving alternative and creative community in Denver, a kind that San Francisco, Austin, Seattle or Brooklyn are known for but we don’t really have much of a name or recognition for here, for now.

When we someday look back at this moment in history – at this generation, this culture and this political landscape – we don’t yet know it’ll be portrayed except as big change.  Change for the LGBT movement, for media, for technological connectivity and for politics. The 2008 elections completely obliterated the old concept of who can reach the highest levels of influence and success in life, yet was almost simultaneous with an economic shift that humbled tens of millions, even as it drove a new political element to the surface re-thinking how Americans will view work, wealth and personal spending. Revolution, even the best kind, never comes without some pain and sacrifice, of course.

The question that’s left is ours to answer: Is now one of the most difficult times to be young – or one of the best?

Diego, floating

about the photographer:

Josh Olsen is a Denver photographer who explores the gay subculture of the unconventional men that he interacts with. Olsen continues to redefine the idea of masculinity through the creative approach of documentary-style photography. His primary subject is the male form and his technique incorporates light, mood and environment recording people in his day-to-day life: a gang of undisputed exhibitionists. Follow Josh Olsen’s work on his website, Otterj.com.