The Styrous® Viewfinder: Beemer Memory 33: Tom of Finland

May 8, 2021

Beemer Memory 33: Tom of Finland

Untitled (Model & Photographer) - 1963

Today, May 8, is the birthday of Finnish artist, Touko Valio Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland (1920 – 1991). He is known for his stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and for his influence on late 20th century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, Laaksonen produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.

Touko Valio Laaksonen (Tom of Finland) - 1991

photo by Robert Mapplethorpe

When I was working with photographer Jim Stewart in 1978, I had the pleasure of meeting Laaksonen one night at the Fey-Way Studio, operated by Robert Opel, in San Francisco and found him to be a very quiet, gentle and charming man (link below). He later photographed me on my motorcycle to use as a reference for one of his drawings; I don't know if he ever did but it might have looked like this as this was one of the poses he photographed and I had a mustache, but everybody had one back then, so, maybe not.

Tom of Finland - Biker

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Fotografiska (The Swedish Museum of Photography) in collaboration with Tom of Finland Foundation produced The Darkroom, an exciting study of the life and work process of Laaksonen. The exhibition, curated by Berndt Arell, travels from Stockholm to New York in time for Tom of Finland’s 101st birthday (8th May).

Fotografiska New York
281 Park Ave South at 22nd St.
New York, NY 10010
212-433-FOTO

30th Apr 2021 – 20th Aug 2021 @ 11:00 am – 9:00 pm

“TOM OF FINLAND The Darkroom”

The exhibition consists of photographic portraits which served as reference images for his famed homoerotic drawings.

Tom of Finland ~ Aarno -1976

Silver Gelatin Print

These photographs were confined to Laaksonen’s home studio and darkroom, displaying them elsewhere would have risked a prison sentence, as homosexuality was criminalized and classified as a mental disorder in his native Finland.

In 1988, Laaksonen spoke at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, California (link below).

His work has inspired fashion as well as art. A show of those fashions had super-handsome, super-macho models any one of which could have been an inspiration for one of his drawings. The opening featured the song by Aussie music producer Rob Dougan, Clubbed To Death, complete with howling wolves, of course.

Tom of Finland fashion show - 1988

photographer unknown

Finland issued three postage stamps with his drawings in his honor. The stamps are the work of Finnish designer Timo Berry and are based on drawings by Laaksonen. The stamps were announced by the Finnish postal service Itella Posti Oy in April 2014 and were released on September 8. They are considered to be the world's first depicting homoerotic art. The German Tagesspiegel called the series a Kassenschlager (blockbuster), a world-wide box office success.

Tom of Finland postage stamp - 2014

The above image is one of the stamps on the sheet with the three drawings by Tom of Finland. Itella Posti Oy said that the Tom of Finland stamps were already the most popular ever in terms of media attention.

Tom of Finland postage stamp sheet - 2014

Art critic Estelle Lovatt said the stamps were a "great statement"; she and others including Mark Joseph Stern, writer of an LGBTQ blog at Slate, noted that Finland then had not yet legalized same-sex marriage. In Finland, an online petition called for cancellation of the issue as "[neither] aesthetically beautiful [nor] culturally valuable", and the Christian-owned department store chain Halpa-Halli [fi] refused to stock them. The issue of the stamps ran parallel to public debate on legalization of gay marriage in the same year; a bill for legalization was approved by the Parliament on 12 December 2014.

A film, Tom of Finland, was released by Protagonist Pictures and debuted in 2017 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Aleksi Bardy wrote the screenplay, which tells the life story of Laaksonen, who would become known around the world by his nom de guerre, “Tom of Finland.”

Tom of Finland - 2017

movie poster

Also, Tom of Finland, a musical, premiered on January 27, 2017, at the City Theatre in Turku, Finland, where Laaksonen is considered a national hero. The music was written by Jori Sjöroos and directed by Tuomas Parkkinen with choreography by Reija Wäre. She said the Turku City Theatre received complaints even before the musical was premiered, as the production included child actors and it was presumed that the musical’s topic would not be suitable for children. The creative team was kept unaware of this criticism, and the premiere went ahead as planned.