Flash (Ah-Ah!): Zac Bayly's Super-Sexy Superheroes

By TJ Sidhu

A flaccid penis can be hilarious, all limp and lifeless, but even more so when it’s caught bouncing around mid-air. In photographer Zac Bayly’s first photobook, titled Flash (Ah-Ah!), naked superheroes fly through the air with their willies and boobs and all the other bits swinging about against the night sky.

For Flash (Ah-Ah!) – part of DoBeDo’s ongoing 6x4 Photo Series, which sees artists produce experimental projects in the form of a handmade book, Bayly asked friends if they’d be up for jumping around naked and painted as their favourite superheroes on a giant trampoline in his back garden. Each shot involved five or six hours of body-painting before the models were up on the trampoline, and then it’d all be over in five minutes because the make-up had smudged and sweated off. “Thankfully, I have a lot of insane friends and friends-of-friends who said ‘yes’ immediately."

Bayly’s style can be sexually-charged, at times landing somewhere between the muscular pin-ups of 1980s gay porn magazines and the lo-fi digital camera shots shared on the internet in the mid-2000s. Often set against his favourite playground, the beach, Bayly’s homoerotic scenes of tanned, toned butts and bodies in various states of undress are an exercise in casual eroticism; Australia looks like a throbbing land of homosexual desire. It’s playful, too – kinky with a wink, and flirtatious in its unpretentious humour. “I love intimacy in photographs,” Bayly says. “From the beginning, I felt it was important for homosexual desire to be present in my photos. I didn’t want to water it down.”

Before becoming a bonafide photographer, you wrote for and edited magazines. How did the pivot into photography come about?

In the first half of my 20s, I spent either a lot of time in an office — sometimes drinking coffee and Red Bulls until 2am on the weekend when the magazine was in production — or I was locked up at home trying to squeeze however many thousand words out of myself for an article I was writing. I loved interviewing people, but increasingly I kept thinking, “I want to do stuff outside!” At one point I had randomly tried past-life hypnosis and I had a vision of this golden hawk telling me, “You’ll find happiness at the beach”. So I moved into my friend’s spare room overlooking Tamarama Beach in Sydney, and he had some old cameras lying about that I started playing with.

What was the first ever shoot you did? And how did you feel about it before and after?

I’d been taking photos of the sunset from my friend’s balcony, and photos of birds in the palm trees etcetera, and I’d started to post some, so around that time a magazine reached out to me and asked me to shoot a portrait series. I thought, “Fuck it, why not.” I loved the resulting photos, but I wanted to know if I was delusional, so I found the email address of my favourite photographer at the time and asked him what he thought, and he very kindly replied something along the lines of “I think you’re a photographer now.” That gave me a confidence boost, so I kept experimenting.

What was the scariest part of the transition? Did you ever fear you’d be no good at it?

Yeah, I was totally afraid that if I put out bad photos, I’d be ruining two careers at once, because it would be hard to get back into editing. I knew that I had a good idea of the kind of imagery I wanted to create — commissioning other photographers for magazines had taught me to an extent what I liked and didn’t like — but it was a learning curve, like anything you haven’t done before.

What gave you the idea to shoot a bunch of nude superheroes for your 6x4 Book Series project?

Years ago, I was looking at photos of people dressed or painted as their favourite cartoon characters, and then I started finding these photos of people who were painting themselves naked like superhero characters at nude or kink events. I’m still not sure where the original photos I found were taken. It popped back into my head when we were talking about ideas for this project. I love shooting people hanging from trees and cliffs and jumping about, so it kind of made sense to shoot them "flying" on the trampoline.

I read in an interview that wherever possible you try to “avoid shooting perfectly ‘modely’ models”. Who did you cast for Flash (Ah Ah!), and what gave them the superhero credentials?

I asked a lot of my friends, and I asked if they knew anyone, and maybe at some point I did a call out on Instagram too. It’s a lot to ask of someone — you spend six or more hours getting painted, then you’ve got a few minutes to jump around — and it's surprising how exhausting it is — before the makeup sweats off, and during that time your bits are flying around, and at the end of it the images aren’t retouched at all. Thankfully, I have a lot of insane friends and friends-of-friends who said ‘yes’ immediately.

When it comes to your photography work, what are some of your biggest influences, and how do they present themselves in the photographs

Weirdly, I think one of my original reference points was photos of mars, which is why I started shooting on cliffs at night. I watch and read a lot of science fiction. I look at NASA images quite a bit. When I shoot somewhere, I try to imagine that it’s the middle of nowhere, like there’s this endless nature around us. But then I love intimacy in photographs, and from the beginning I always felt it was important for homosexual desire to be present in my photos; I didn’t want to water it down. I was always a fan of photographers who embrace sexuality and explore the body in raw and fantastic ways in their work.

Your work often has a kinky, humorous undertone. What makes you laugh the most?

Arrested Development. It’s still so funny! When I was a teenager I literally spewed in one episode from laughing so much. Lady Dynamite, Veep... At the other end of the spectrum, I've been reading Shirley Jackson’s short stories and they have some really funny moments.

You can shoot one person, and one person only: who is it?

Forever? Christ… who was actually my first crush, so maybe him.

Where is the best place to go to shut off and zone out?

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from the photographer Venetia Scott, who said that some of her best ideas came to her when she was waiting at the laundromat, staring at the wall. I have to remind myself to disconnect and stare at the wall for a bit. I usually leave my devices inside and go and sit in the garden. It gets a bit boring actually.