Androgynous Apocalypse

Text & Photos by Fred Berger

A post-apocalyptic photo essay featuring androgynous goth boys in fetish fashion cavorting through a devastated industrial landscape, fusing queer romance, avantgarde style, and nuclear Armageddon.

Keywords: goth, fetish fashion, androgyny, post-apocalypse, queer romance

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the End of Days, which first germinated in my young mind during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. At that time, the whole country was in a state of panic over the seemingly imminent outbreak of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. My father was a Civil Defense warden, and he instilled in me a strong sense of impending disaster, complete with instructions on how to use a ham radio and a Geiger counter. He was so prepared for the worst, that he almost looked forward to the day when “the shit hits the fan,” as he so eloquently described it. Fortunately, frantic diplomatic efforts defused the crisis at the last possible moment, and the entire world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Even so, an apocalyptic mindset influenced my worldview thereafter, which was further exacerbated by other Cold War conflicts, as well as televised prophets of doom who continuously sounded the alarm from a biblical or geo-political perspective.

Pop culture contributed heavily to the end-times mania, with David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs LP in 1974 and the post-World War 3 action movie The Road Warrior in 1981 having an especially strong influence on my overwrought imagination. I was literally seduced by Bowie’s latest androgynous persona, Halloween Jack, appearing on the album’s dustjacket as a mutant man-dog hybrid, and by the film’s queer outlaw biker couple, Wez and the Golden Youth. These exquisitely stylized and romanticized productions had the effect of transforming my perception of Doomsday from trepidation to fetishization. It was the fusion of these esoteric, aesthetic, and erotic sensibilities that formed the basis of Propaganda Magazine’s unique counterculture brand. In fact, it was the looming threat of Armageddon that spurred me to work at a feverish pace and make a maximum effort to not only cover the punk and goth scenes, but also to shape them according to my own preferences and artistic vision.

The four photos appearing in this article were taken in 1996 and represent an anarchistic departure from the status quo that mainstream society tries so hard to uphold. The dystopian setting was a demolished factory complex in Port Washington, Long Island in the state of New York. Looking suitably post-apocalyptic, it even had apropos graffiti, with the phrase “NUKE THIS EYE SORE” and the anarchist “A” symbol spray-painted on the ruins. The models were selected for their androgynous appeal and lack of inhibitions about the shoot’s queer-fetish theme. The Asian beauty is Sky and the other is Christoph of French Cajun extraction, both genuine goth boys from New York City and Louisiana respectively. It was the first homo-romantic shoot I had ever done, and it vividly captured the civilizational collapse so strikingly portrayed in Diamond Dogs and The Road Warrior. Never had the Apocalypse seemed so beautiful – or desirable.