During World War Two, the Australian government's Department of Information represented the male body in at least two distinct ways. The photographer Edward Cranstone photographed a heroically active, phallicised body and the cameraman Damien Parer filmed a heroically suffering abject body.
Using illustrations from a technical manual of the 1940s `the author examines the working male figure in popular iconography focusing on masculine representation in the visual arts and its link to the means of production.
Masculinity continues its argument with itself, quizzical at its self-propelled self-assertion. But in asserting aggression the pain is not just experienced in the victim. For even in the crudest acts of coitus, for a moment, the raper becomes the raped, he is tied by his penis and his balls into an abomination.
We collage, genderbend, cross dress and polymorph exquisite corpses out of media and advertising personalities, then use them as fantasy aids in the cause of our mundane desires.
Harry's work immediately identifies the object as a site of meaning. It is fair to say that Harry is strongly opposed to any restriction or taboo upon what he may represent, particularly from the arena of representing the female object or gender.