Walter Cessna Has Died: Revisiting the Queer Photographer's Work

Photographer, stylist, author and curator Walter Cessna has passed away, from as yet unknown causes. The queer artist and NYC nightlife staple is mourned today by a flurry of posts across social media, remembering his legacy of contributing to LGBTQ culture through outlets like East Village Eye, New York Talk, Village Voice and Details.

A 2012 Queertyprofile described Cessna as, "a teenage publishing wunderkind, an underage club kid, a zinester, and a designer, stylist and darling of the fashion world. He styled Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral Tour; he dated Mario Testino when he was 18 years old. He was a hustler in San Francisco, a photographer in New York. He's battled addiction and has been living with HIV for year--facts about which he maintains a gleefully dark sense of humor. He's been in multiple comas..."

Fellow New York artist Trey Speegle wrote about Cessna on Facebook, saying, "He was brilliant and complicated and like many creatives, his own worst enemy. He was constantly writing and photographing and musing and telling us all what was 'correct,' a term he used to describe anything he deemed brilliant and worthy of praise."

In the following slides, we revisit some of the distinctly original images Cessna caught on camera.

Portrait of the artist from waltcessna.tumblr.com