Excerpted
from Glenn OšBrienšs essay which appeared in the Janos Gat Gallery catalog
of Emil Cadoošs Works from the Sixties. (Nov.-Dec. 2001)
Emil
Cadoo was one of the defining photographers of the Sixties. His semi-storied
career perfectly exemplifies that decade's lust for change, its commitment
to experiment and its boundary-bridging ambition. Cadoos work ranged from
high level photojournalism at Life to beat generation portraiture to artistically
ambitious and sexually ambiguous erotica, which became a cause celebre
in the fight against artistic censorship.
In May of 1960,
Cadoo emigrated to Paris, as had Richard Wright, James Baldwin and many
black Jazz musicians of his generation, who found that racism was less
pronounced in France. Cadoo found that as an African-American and as a
homosexual he was more at ease in Paris and he has lived there ever since-except
for an extended visit to New York in 1965, when he created his series
exploring two sides of the Sixties: Central Park and Children of Harlem.