With Madonna reentering the spotlight ahead of her upcoming Confessions II era, a new editorial series is revisiting one of the most debated chapters of her career, and reframing it through a distinctly queer lens.
Photographer Rex Bonomelli and creative collaborator Yann have created a black-and-white portrait series that pulls directly from the visual language of Madonna’s 1992 book Sex. But this isn’t a nostalgia play. It’s a conversation about authorship, risk, and what queer expression still costs today.
I spoke with both creatives about the project, which arrives at a moment when Madonna’s legacy is once again under the microscope.
Why SEX Still Hits a Nerve
For Rex, the connection to Madonna’s most controversial work goes back decades.
“I have been a Madonna fan from day one,” he told me. “When I finally saw the book, I fell in love with how bold it was. The images stuck with me.”
Yann framed it less as admiration and more as unfinished business.
“The SEX book was and still is groundbreaking,” he said. “If it dropped tomorrow, it would cause absolute commotion.”
That idea, that the work hasn’t lost its edge, sits at the center of the series. When Madonna first released SEX, it arrived during the height of the AIDS crisis, when queer intimacy was either erased or condemned in mainstream spaces. The backlash was immediate, from religious institutions to global bans.
Yet, as Yann pointed out, the discomfort it sparked hasn’t disappeared.
“The part that feels most misunderstood is also the most urgent,” he said. “The insistence that queer desire deserves to be seen as art. People assume we’ve moved past needing that argument. We haven’t.”
Translating an Icon Through Leather Culture
While the visual references to Steven Meisel’s original photography are clear, the team wasn’t interested in replication.
“We started pretty literal with lighting and setup,” Rex explained. “Then we made it our own.”
That shift came through the lens of leather culture, not as styling, but as history.
“There’s a lineage there,” Yann told me. “It carries the weight of spaces like the Mineshaft and the Eagle. It’s about protest, grief, and survival.”
That context reshapes the images. Instead of simply echoing Madonna’s provocation, the series roots itself in queer lived experience, bridging past and present.
Rex added that the spontaneity of the shoot played a key role. Yann, often blindfolded during sessions, had little room to second-guess poses. The result feels immediate rather than staged, with textures added later as a nod to the original book’s design.
The Image That Anchors It All
Every project has a moment where everything clicks. For this one, it came through a direct homage.
“Recreating the image of her sucking her middle finger was the core,” Yann said. “It’s simple, but it says everything.”
In the original SEX, the photo carried a kind of quiet defiance. In this reinterpretation, that same energy is filtered through a different body and perspective, less about imitation, more about continuation.
“It just says: I’m here, I’m unashamed,” Yann added.
Reconsidering Madonna’s Risk
With Madonna stepping back into cultural conversation, the series also asks viewers to reconsider what she put on the line.
“I think people need to respect what she’s done,” Rex said. “There aren’t many artists who have taken risks like that and stayed on top.”
Yann was more direct.
“She was advocating for LGBTQ+ people at a time when it could have cost her everything,” he said. “That wasn’t symbolic. That was real.”
It’s easy, he noted, to view SEX as a relic rather than a turning point. But doing so flattens its impact.
“We’ve inherited a world that’s more open in some ways,” he said. “It’s easy to forget who made that possible.”
A Refusal to Let History Fade
What makes this series land now isn’t just its visual connection to Madonna’s past work. It’s the timing. As conversations around censorship, visibility, and queer expression continue to shift, the questions raised by SEX feel less like history and more like a mirror.
For Yann, the goal is simple: keep the record straight.
“When culture tries to rewrite history,” he said, “it’s on us to push back.”
This series does exactly that, not by softening Madonna’s legacy, but by sharpening it.
