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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE September 20, 2002

evening'sout

Images of long-term lovers and unrequited loves

Men I've Loved

by Tom Bianchi

Janssen Publishing $39.95 Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal

Tom Bianchi is a multi-faceted individual. He is a lawyer, writer, business executive and an artist. In 1993, he co-founded CytoDyn, a biotech company developing a new class of drugs to treat HIV and AIDS. Bianchi himself is HIV positive.

As an artist, Bianchi has his hands in many pies. As a painter, sculptor and photogra-

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pher, his works have been exhibited all over the world and in the past few years he has also made a foray into the world of video and film.

But Bianchi is probably best known as a photographer whose black and white images have garnered quite a huge following. He has had eight books of photography published, including Out of the Studio, Extraordinary Friends, Bob and Rod, In Defense of Beauty. Outpost, and In the Studio. All these books focus primarily on men. His book Among Women is a beautiful collec-

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unrequited loves. Bianchi shares his journey as a young man in the closet to

a grown man, who has loved and lost and loved and won.

The book is both pictorially and verbally autobiographical. Bianchi has not only captured his lov-

ers with his telling lens, but he has turned the lens on himself giving us an intimate portrait, both visually and otherwise.

The prose and poetry work well for the most part, although at times some of it reads a bit awkwardly.

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tion of images of women enjoying their own spaces together in the exclusive company of women. Living with Dickens is images of his long time cat.

In all of his books focusing on the human form, Bianchi always seems to be celebrating togetherness, camaraderie, friendship, love in its many incarnations, and the various real bonds that tie us all together.

In his latest book, Men I've Loved, he has compiled a series of images of him and the many men that he has fallen in love with. Accompanying these beautiful images are essays and poems, written by Bianchi, celebrating these men.

The men that he has loved include longterm lovers, short-term partners and even

In his words Bianchi not only describes these men in all their glory and with all their foibles, but he also talks frankly about his own shortcomings, his own vulnerabilities and the many mistakes he has made in the crazy game we call love.

In the afterword to the book, Bianchi writes that, "I thank every man whose story is told in these pages. They've given me a life immersed in love's lessons. One lesson I've learned for certain. As the poems in this book cumulatively reveal, the gravity of mutual attraction is a God-force which can increase our understanding a love of life."

Indeed, Men I've Loved is as much a celebration of love as it is a celebration of life, blessed with so much love.

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