One of the earliest photographic works of Stuart Sandford, a series titled Cumfaces (2007), stands out as a highlight in his body of work. At first glance, the expressive faces of young men in closeups—are they in anguish or ecstasy? Are they gasping for their last breath, experiencing La petit Mort? A brief loss or weakening of consciousness, more specifically a post-orgasm sensation likened to death. The premise of Sandford’s orgasmic photo exercise: a call to interested participants, to capture the striking moment young men cum; their apparatus, the camera; a hazy moment of ecstasy. Initially commissioned by GAY TIMES Magazine in 2007, it secured one of the many points of direction and notoriety for the young artist and marked the first iteration of the idea of the selfie in Sandford’s practice which he would return to in sculptures and appropriated works in the following decade.

Born in 1978 in Sheffield, England, with dreams of a life treading the boards, Sandford became more interested in the behind-the-scenes world, and began penning scripts to direct them. An ex-love encouraged him to study fine art, to give him a thorough understanding of art history, current art-making practices, and time to experiment with different media. Focusing on photography and moving images was always the paramount idea, and that is what continues to dictate his inspiration and forms.

Following artistic bohemian impulses, Sandford tried a stint in Berlin in 2007 for six months, struggling to carve out a living and subsequently moving to London for a few years. Then, New York City in 2010, where he met like-minded queer art folks like Billy Miller, Bruce LaBruce, Gio Black Peter, and Slava Mogutin — to date these people have become part of his extended queer family, which has become a well of inspiration, encouragement and true friendships. His time in New York inspired seminal works that were a springboard propelling his body of work forward with clearer vision.

Sandford’s art-making is firmly fixed in the classicism of Ancient Greece and Rome, creating a contemporary of the eternal story of the male figure. Echos of the ever-lasting story of Hadrian’s love for Antinous in 130 AD. Emperor Hadrian had a hard-on for supposedly the most beautiful man that ever lived, bagged him, and fell madly in love. As any good Greek tragedy goes, some highs and lows, tumult, and death. Antinous drowned in the river Nile at age twenty. Devastated, Hadrian built statues of his image and was determined to build his legacy as a God. This mythology inspired Sandford’s first sculptural works and continues to inspire him on a feature film which he has worked on for a decade.

Sandford is in-the-life, present in a whirling post-AIDS, most QUEER era delivering a sound reminder to hold beauty to the light, images of love encounters, languid bodies, and a time of place. It is a far cry from images of ill and ravaged youth from the late 80s and 90s, captured in TV flashes of skeletal bodies in the news; a shattering of the progress that was afoot from the Late ‘60s and ‘70s changed the course of the mono-centric proposal of “Gay Liberation.” His work is not solely voyeuristic but loving and soulful, resulting from his imposed requirement of certain intimacies with his subjects, whether through blossoming friendship or carnal knowledge. A hurried image or closeup and studied, is a celebration of life and an acknowledgment of the vibrancy of queer life, queer bodies now in real-time.

He was introduced to Durk Dehner in 2014 and invited to live at the artist commune TOM House, where he was instrumental in starting the artists’ residency program at the historic former home of the man himself, Touko Valio Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland. He found a community that relishes the erotic, BDSM, Leather Culture; a queer cultural hub in the intersectionality, and diversity of queer folk. While there, Sandford bonded with a strong Latinx Community in Los Angeles, forging friendships that encouraged him and helped create a bridge for his next adventures in Mexico City. Now Sandford is back in the UK for an extended period and taking the time to explore what his hometown can offer, always with plans for the next big move.

Heady days in LA, Mexico, the UK, and beyond have informed his latest work, creating photographic tableaus that are familiar yet far away. His power lies in depicting his subject with the greatest of ease as if the camera is not there or he has become the camera, a camera with loving eyes, again blurring the line between art and life. The negative spaces in his photographic work are just as beautiful—these corners leave us to fill them with meaning, partake in libidinal longing, or place us in the instance of living life. His travels have expanded the eye on bodies beyond the Eurocentric norms, bodies with a myriad of shapes and colouring. Meeting boys via hook-up apps or the many parties and cultural events, he hardly misses, feeding his appetite for that perfect picture, face, body, the magic of time captured. He collapses time to create ample room for intimacies reflected clearly in all his work. He has created a dreamy pause from outside forces that insist on knocking down queer folks at any turn.

Sandford has forged perfect symmetry in his work. The through line is an uncompromising dedication to particular sensibilities, a relaxed formality with blurs of the now, but always with a fixed eye on beauty and truth.