Exhibition

Stuart Sandford:

In Youth Is Pleasure

September 4 - November 29, 2025

Opening Reception:

September 4, 2025
6 - 8 PM PST

Main Gallery
Free to Members and the Public

The Bob Mizer Foundation proudly presents In Youth Is Pleasure, the San Francisco debut of photographer Stuart Sandford, on view from September 3 to November 29, 2025. Featuring selections from his recent monograph Stuart Sandford XXX, the exhibition offers an intimate exploration of youth, sensuality, and fleeting connection. Sandford’s portraits—capturing lovers, friends, and muses in unguarded moments—reveal both vulnerability and joy, echoing the spirit of Bob Mizer’s own work. Known for his evocative style, Sandford’s photography has been featured in prestigious collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Centre de la Photographie Genève. Join us on Saturday, September 6 at 7:00 PM for an exclusive Zoom presentation with the artist, where he’ll discuss his process and share the inspirations behind his powerful and tender imagery.

A Tender Celebration of Queer Intimacy, Youth, and the Male Form.

Stuart Sandford is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, sculpture, painting, moving image, and installation. Based between London, Los Angeles, and Mexico City, Sandford has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Centre de la Photographie Genève, and the Tom of Finland Foundation. His work is included in prominent collections, including the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Photography Collection, the Ömer Koç Collection, the Rennie Collection, and the Schwules Museum in Berlin. Sandford is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and continues to push boundaries with work that is as intimate as it is provocative.

Born in Sheffield, England, Sandford began his career by using photography to explore themes of masculinity, sexuality, vulnerability, and queer desire. From his early series Cumfaces (2007)—a bold set of portraits capturing young men at the moment of orgasm—he has consistently challenged and reimagined traditional representations of the male body. His work confronts the gaze, exposes emotion, and finds tenderness in spaces often reserved for bravado.

In Youth Is Pleasure presents a compelling selection of photographs from Sandford’s monograph Stuart Sandford XXX. This exhibition is a meditation on the fleeting beauty of youth, connection, and physicality. His subjects—friends, lovers, and muses—are captured in private, often disarming moments. Some recline on unmade beds, others exist in the hazy quiet of post-coital reflection. Through these intimate portraits, Sandford invites viewers to experience youth not as spectacle, but as something familiar, ephemeral, and emotionally charged.

Sandford’s visual language blends candid realism with a classical sensibility. His photographs are indebted to art history, yet are thoroughly contemporary—marked by the emotional honesty and sensuality of queer lived experience. Across his body of work, Sandford draws influence from mythology, ancient sculpture, and homoerotic art traditions. His 2022 sculpture Adlocutio (Sean Ford) reimagines a Roman figure of speech and power, inserting a modern twist by presenting the subject mid-selfie. Similarly, his work The Wrestler/s (2023–2024) restages a lost Greek bronze sculpture as a double self-portrait, featuring the same model in mirrored combat, examining dominance and submission within the self.

Through all of his mediums, Sandford explores the intersections of desire, representation, and identity. His work speaks to a lineage of queer artists—such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Nan Goldin—who document their communities not as outsiders but as participants. Sandford’s photographs are not mere observations; they are invitations. He seeks the “magic moment” when artist and subject align, and in that alignment, reveals a world that is soft, charged, and deeply human.

This exhibition, his San Francisco debut, is presented by the Bob Mizer Foundation. It continues the Foundation’s mission to honor the legacy of queer visual culture through preservation and contemporary programming. “Sandford embodies the spirit of Bob Mizer,” notes De Kwok, Head of Programming. “There is a joy and openness in his work that mirrors the exuberant energy we see in Mizer’s images. Both artists understand the camera as a tool of connection.”

In Youth Is Pleasure offers more than a glimpse into a private world—it creates one. A world where desire is natural, bodies are revered, and every moment of affection, tension, or touch is worthy of preservation. In a cultural moment when queer lives and narratives are under increasing scrutiny, Sandford’s work insists on tenderness. It asks us to look closer, and to see the divine in the ordinary.