There is a framed photo in LSDXOXO’s Berlin home where a model poses – back arched and backside reared – with a lightbulb in his mouth and a plume of smoke chemtrailing from his perineum. Shot by Wolfgang Tillmans, the DJ (and his appartment) is just one of the many faces of BUTT magazine’s latest edition. Filled with interviews and photographs of “shameless queers the world over,” it’s the third issue to have surfaced since founders Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom returned from a ten-year hiatus in 2022.
Elsewhere, an OnlyFans model bares the grubby soles of his feet to discuss Iran’s violent political crackdown while Eileen Myles talks poetry with Brontez Purnell – because it’s not all smut, though there is a lot of that. Now backed by Bottega Veneta, the cult publication has forged a community of readers that look to its pages for “creative connection and good sex”. An antidote to the World of Wonder franchise and anything that Attitude might be likely to cover, BUTT is perhaps one the last remaining magazines made for and by queer people on the peripheries of the mainstream.
It also treats fine art and fetishists with the same esteem. For example, there is an interview in an old edition of the magazine where a gay man explains his decision to stop washing – he talks about being aroused by the sight and smell of a homeless man and how he hasn’t cleaned his bedsheets in years. Jonkers and van Bennekom’s current issue is only slightly more classé: Oliver Sim poses for an illustrator, Daisuke Nakashima photographs shirtless men in Japan, Akeem Smith slips into a latex flesh suit, and Czech tombstone engraver Roman Hanak fronts the cover.
Click here to see more and purchase a copy of BUTT 32.