If You Can Reach My Heart, You Can Keep It

If You Can Reach My Heart, You Can Keep It is the sixth book by photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist Matt Lambert and serves as a comprehensive chronicle of Lambert's experimental film archive spanning the years 2015 to 2025 – including unreleased set photography, film stills, behind-the-scenes and other ephemera. Lambert began his practice in the 2010s, creating transgressive short films, publishing projects and ongoing collaborations with queer icons. Central to his practice is a deep engagement with queer history, which he employs as a framework for investigating contemporary notions of intimacy. The artist's work is deeply rooted in his own identity. "Making this book has been a process of looking at work and understanding it entirely as a lens on my youth in LA — and the ephemera that I was both obsessed with and terrified of: the porn ads from the LA Express from the newspapers on the streets of Santa Monica Blvd, the VHS porno covers of the films that were being filmed in the cul-de-sac's of the valley, the punk-show ads in the back of the LA Weekly and the homemade collages for the backyard gigs in Venice. In the last few years, my work has accepted my DNA of camp and humour, evolving from work so rooted in poetic esoterica. Re-editing these archives retrospectively has allowed me to discover and reframe this unreleased material. As the work starts to enter a lexicon of queer history, I wanted to re-share work in a way that I see it now." A significant aspect of Lambert's work includes various prominent faces and body parts! Including adult actors Sean Ford, Joey Mills, Angel Rivera, Billy Vega, Kaiden Ford, musician Christeene, muse and designer Michèle Lamy, designer Rick Owens, The Cock Destroyers, performance artist Taco Guillen and many more. The presence of these subjects in Lambert's work is crucial; they not only highlight the nuances of contemporary queer culture but the subjects also actively participate in co-constructing the work. The works displayed in this book, chronicle the artist's archive divided into chapters — including unreleased set photography, behind-the-scenes, film stills, scripts, stories and quotes from performers as well as cult films from Flower, Pleasure Park, Butt Muscle, Subspace, Sweat, Moan Together, and Release Me, Klappe and more from the artist's body of work. If you can reach my heart, you can keep it also introduces the art director Studio Yukiko, who has designed the book with inspiration drawn from queer adult publications and VHS tapes from the 1980s and 1990s establishing a dialogue between Lambert's contemporary oeuvre and the broader historical narrative surrounding queer representation in print media as well as a homage to years spent in The Valley and the porn production houses. The book also contains an introduction by Canadian author and playwright Jordan Tannahill.