Robert Flynt has long been interested in layering imagery through double exposures in the camera or through sandwiched negatives in the darkroom. In the early 1990s, he often combined images copied from old engravings, illustrated books, and instructional manuals with photographs of figures underwater, resulting in a dreamlike mix of imagery and allusion. Here, the underlying picture represents Hercules wrestling the Hydra. Made at the height of the AIDS crisis when there was an uneasy tension between sex and death, Flynt’s photograph leaves the viewer to wonder whether the figures are locked in an erotic embrace or fierce struggle—or perhaps both.