Lawrence Brose: A tribute to his creative work and contribution to Western New York. Over the month of February 2025 VASA and CEPA Gallery in Buffalo New York, USA, will publish interviews and four films of Lawrence Brose.

About Lawrence Brose

Interview part 7

Interview part 8

Interview part 9

 

Film 1: "De Profundia" (1997)

Black and White / Color
65 min

FILM DESCRIPTION

Starring Agnes de Garron and Mark Miller with Leon Ko and the Radical Faeries
Music by Frederic Rzewski, with additional compositions by Douglas Cohen and Lawrence Brose.
Piano and Voice performance by Frederic Rzewski
Studio lighting and design by Keith Gemerek

FILM DESCRIPTION

De Profundis is a mesmerizing and seductive investigation of Oscar Wilde's project of Transgressive Aesthetics. Incorporating home movies from the 1920s and early gay male erotica along with images from Radical Faerie gatherings and queer pagan rituals, radical drag performances, and images of confinement, the film sets up a haunting investigation of queerness masculinity, history, and sexuality.

​In the film, Lawrence Brose adopts a three-part strategy to investigate the historical implications of sexuality, gender construction, and language; explore Oscar Wilde's poetics, and critique the homogenization of the contemporary gay movement. De Profundis employs experimental hand and alternative chemical processing techniques to alter the original images. The transformed footage addresses the fixed framing of masculinity while questioning concepts of redemption, contamination, and transgression set against critical readings of Wilde and contemporary gay culture. These images are buttressed against a soundtrack composed of Wilde aphorisms, a score by Frederic Rzewski, and multi-tracked interviews of diverse contemporary gay men.

The film begins with a short story told by Kenny Cooper, a New York Radical Faerie, about his first experience with public sex in a movie theatre.  The story sets up an initial descent into the worlds of public vs. private, sexual deviance, and movies. Following this story are 19 sound loops woven together of Agnes de Garron's readings of Wilde aphorisms being delivered in various vocal personas.  The readings have been composed into sound loops by composer Douglas Cohen and work to focus the viewer onto Wilde's use of language and his transgressive aesthetics set up against authority, revealing the paradox of language as a containing and defining force. The sound loops also function to establish the language of Wilde before his "fall into disgrace,” which the letter DeProfundis revels in.

Part II of the film is constructed around the score, a musical setting of Wilde's prison letter. Images of Radical Faerie ritual gatherings, pagan witch performances, images of confinement and struggle, and drag performances by Agnes de Garron (a founding member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence) function as contamination to the contained image of Wilde, as presented in the words and music. These images work to corrupt the romantic existentialism of personal redemption and sorrow of the prison letter.

In Part III, the soundtrack is a sound environment of colliding voices from several sources that question the framing of a singular voice in the 1990's gay movement and thereby shatter an ideological framework of normalization. The soundtrack, much like the images in the film, functions to call language into question through continual shifts of focus within the layers as a kind of palimpsest or a polyphonic poetics that problematizes narrative conventions, piercing the skin of a homogenous unified voice..

Lawrence Brose VASA Introduction, January 24, 2025

Lawrence Brose is a filmmaker whose life and work are rooted in resilience, creativity, and defiance of societal norms. His groundbreaking film DE PROFUNDIS, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s prison letter of the same name, premiered in 1997 at the Public Theater in New York. The film is not a traditional narrative—it’s an artistic exploration of suffering, self-discovery, and liberation, blending vintage gay porn, family films, and music into a mesmerizing hand-manipulated, color visual collage.

Brose’s art draws from Wilde’s bold refusal to conform to heteronormative expectations and his own experiences growing up in scrappy, rough and tumble South Buffalo, under the heavy influence of the Catholic Church. A rebellious spirit, Lawrence even endured blindness in one eye—a challenge that shaped his life and unique perspective as an artist.

Starting as a piano tuner, Lawrence became so skilled at restoring Steinways that his business
flourished and was eventually bought out by Steinway itself. This allowed him to pursue his passion for filmmaking. His projects, such as An Individual Desires Solution (1986), a poignant story about his lover’s struggle with AIDS, making this the first personal film about AIDS.

In DE PROFUNDIS, Lawrence worked with a collective of Radical Faeries—daring individuals who celebrate alternative queer identities. From Keith Gemerek, Ken Cooper, and Mark Miller sharing stories of public sex to Agnes de Garron’s intense performances of repression and freedom, their contributions highlight the richness of gay subculture. The film is layered with contemporary music, rituals, and even a haunting reading of Wilde’s text set to piano by respected American composer Frederick Rzewski. Together, these elements reject simple resolutions, questioning masculinity, gender, and the very idea of normalcy.

Brose drew on all these experiences during his tenure as a CEPA Gallery executive director and curator who oversaw several groundbreaking projects.

Lawrence’s life has not been without struggle. In 2006, he was falsely accused by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of possessing illegal images. He was targeted because of his art work that included 80 images from DE PROFUNDIS, which had been screened at venues such as the George Eastman Museum. Despite no evidence, Brose endured a six-year battle that drained his reputation and resources. Ultimately, he took a plea deal for the possession of a single obscene image. However, Brose was widely supported by a global community that recognized his integrity.

Today, Lawrence continues to fight—this time against cancer. He’s preparing for a major exhibition at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo New York in 2025, celebrating his collaborations with composer and dear friend Douglas Cohen on his film about the avant-garde music theorist John Cage. His enduring artistry, strength, and the unwavering support of his community stand as a testament to his incredible life journey.

For more information visit: www.lawrencebrose.com & www.cepagallery.org
——————

Return top

About CEPA Gallery
Located in Buffalo New York’s historic Market Arcade Complex, CEPA is a contemporary photography and visual arts center with impact in both local and national communities. With three galleries of changing exhibits and events, multimedia public art installations, arts education programs, and an open-access darkroom and digital photo lab, CEPA creates a vibrant presence in the heart of downtown Buffalo, New York (USA).

About Light Research
To learn about the photo-based visual and written projects done by Light Research, visit: www.lightresearch.net

About VASA
VASA Exhibitions provides a online viewing and research environment by archiving all of the exhibitions in their entirety. VASA supports photography exhibitions, film/video screenings, the Jounral on Images and Culture (VJIC) and interviews with artist.