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This practice-led research considers two main questions. As LGBTQ+ culture becomes assimilated into the mainstream in the West, are we to view 1980s representations of the depraved male homosexual solely within the framework of the medico-legal pathologisation of homosexuality or can they also communicate the notion of a ‘queer threat’ to mainstream culture? And, how can recent theoretical ideas about ‘queer negativity’ be utilised within the cinematic language of the essay film to augment and progress the re-examination of case studies of ‘gay male depravity’? At the end of the nineteenth century, the photographic image gave visibility to the homosexual. In Picturing Deviancy, Stuart Marshall describes homosexuality’s evolution from sin to disease as part of ‘the medicalisation of deviancy which was to result in a proliferation of new social identities… many of which were to be witnessed and catalogued in the evidence of photography.’ The 1980s – a decade of widespread prejudice, regressive legislation and AIDS – saw a proliferation of negative images of queer people. At a Midwestern Psychological Association convention in Chicago, 1983, psychologist Paul Cameron described homosexuality, not as a lifestyle, but a ‘death-style’. Yet LGBT culture at the time was frequently experienced as radical and transgressive. The research will investigate the nuanced, contradictory appeal of 1980s images of ‘gay depravity’, in light of recent theoretical ideas about 'queer negativity', and utilising a hybrid methodology that incorporates a written component – giving overview and context – and a moving image component – an essay film examining a case study from the decade.