F. Holland Day Suffering the Ideal

The short-lived career of nineteenth-century photographer F. Holland Day is the basis for this important historical monograph. Though he is perhaps best known for his controversial "sacred subjects" in which he posed himself as Jesus Christ, Day quickly moved to the forefront of American photography with his portraiture and his later mythological series. Day was probably the first great photographer of the male nude. A friend of Oscar Wilde and an early proponent of gay rights, women's rights, and racial equality, scandal surrounded him and caused his marginalization.