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Youth and innocence permeate the homoerotic art of Raymond Carrance, as seen in a new retrospective collection, writes Reg Domingo.
Wistful youths stare longingly in the distance; others gaze back with tender innocence, unsure of, or perhaps eagerly anticipating, what is to come. These are the subjects that populate the art of Raymond Carrance (1921-1998), whose body of work is being celebrated in a new retrospective collection.
Carrance was a photographer and book illustrator who, in the 1950s and 60s, created a private catalogue of homoerotic dreamscapes under the pseudonym ‘Czanara’. Not much is known about the artist, other than what Marc Daniel wrote about him in Czanariana, his only monograph to date. Carrance’s creations were only recently discovered in France by a collector, who purchased the artist’s entire collection from a bookseller in Lyon.
What is known is that Carrance had several exhibitions in Paris during the 1960s and 70s, and he illustrated several books with elaborate drawings including an edition of Henry de Montherlant’s 1951 gay classic La Villedon’t Le Prince est un Enfant (The Land Whose King is a Child). 
Czanara: Photographs and Drawings is a new collection that shines light on Carrance’s art, which is certainly courageous and innovative, especially for its time.
In capturing his subjects, either with a lens or a pencil, Carrance marries the old with the new. Languid photographs of innocent youths are overlayed with graphic prints or textures, while classical illustrations are enhanced with surrealist details. Beneath it all flows an undercurrent of melancholic sensuality.
The result is a bold yet supple collection that is as novel now as it was half a century ago, by one of the greatest unknown erotic artists of the 20th century.
Czanara: Photographs and Drawings is published by powerHouse Books.
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