I was first introduced to the work of French Surrealist photographer and painter Pierre Molinier in the mid-90s by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Gen had a fantastic velvet-covered book that simultaneously looked both luxurious and terribly smutty. It was easy to see Gen’s attraction to Molinier’s work and the influence was clear in the pandrogynous project which would soon be embarked upon by Breyer/P-Orridge soon after. (It was readily apparent that Joel-Peter Witkin was no stranger to Molinier’s work, either.)

Pierre Molinier was a seriously strange fellow. For instance, he claimed to have had sex with his dead sister’s corpse and to have photographed it.

“Even dead, she was beautiful. I shot sperm on her stomach and legs, and onto the First Communion dress she was wearing. She took with her into death the best of me.”

Molinier’s bizarre fetish photographs represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexuality and were considered absolutely outrageous for their time. (They’re still outrageous! It wasn’t easy finding a handful that would work on this blog without offending too many people.) Using himself as his primary subject, Molinier’s photo-montage art-form was often about depicting himself as a female (or hermaphroditic) alter-ego usually in the act of… well, auto-fellatio or doing it to him/herself in other creative ways.

Using masks, hand-carved dildos and prosthetic limbs, Molinier’s work was done mostly for his private pleasures starting in the early 1950s, but eventually he sent some of his pieces to Andre Breton who showed the work in 1956, thereby placing Molinier in the Surrealist camp. Early attempts to publish his work were made difficult by printers being reluctant to handle it and were abandoned. Eventually several monographs were published and slowly over the years Molinier’s work has become known to a cognescenti particular about such matters.

In the 1970’s, his health began to falter. Molinier committed suicide while masturbating, shooting himself in the head in his apartment in Bordeaux in 1976.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Below, this strange little animation takes Molinier’s work as a point of departure. Much more chaste than Molinier’s own work, you might want to watch this first before you decide if you want to go any further…