The Italian photographer the world knows as Fagsmafia, makes work that hangs in a queer gallery then follows you home.
His images live in the space where alienation turns into desire, where a stolen sock becomes a relic, where being horny and depressed stops being a contradiction and starts being a whole philosophy. It is analog, it is raw, it is queer in the bone-deep sense of the word. And it is on the cover of SNIFF Magazine Scent 2.
Who Is Fagsmafia?
Abbate describes his practice as research into feelings of alienation and desolation mixed with desperate eroticism. He shoots bodies in extreme places: cities hollowed out by war and earthquakes, abandoned power plants, glaciers, mines. The work is physically dangerous. He has ended up in more than one local hospital chasing a shot. His response to that is characteristically blunt: every scar is a medal.
His alter ego, Fagsmafia, has exhibited across Europe and been published in magazines in Germany, the USA, Austria, Japan, Italy, France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Poland. You have almost certainly seen the work circulating in queer spaces online without knowing where it came from. Now you know.
Off the clock, he is co-curator of My Gay Eye, the annual art book of gay eroticism that has been running since 2003 and has featured the work of over 700 international artists. The latest edition, co-edited with Rinaldo Hopf, dropped in early 2026. If you care about the canon of queer visual culture, you should know this book.
Why He Belongs on This Cover
SNIFF is not a magazine trying to make fetish palatable for the mainstream. It exists precisely because the mainstream keeps trying to erase erotic queer spaces. The first scent took a risk and found an audience with a real appetite for the uncensored and the unashamed. Scent 2 pushes deeper.
Fagsmafia is the right photographer for that project. His work does not soften or aestheticize desire into something tasteful. It digs into the early formations of fetish, the moment when a smell, a texture, a particular image carves itself into your nervous system and stays there. The work understands that queer sexuality is not a sanitized thing and has never wanted to be.
What Is Inside SNIFF Scent 2?
The second scent brings together a sharp group of creatives. The energy inside shifts between playful and confrontational, intimate and unapologetic. Some pieces tease. Some provoke. All of them reject the idea that queer desire needs to be cleaned up before it can be looked at.
Featured artists and contributors include Lontano, Stefan Lo Sciuto, Alberto Villullas Pulido, Nathaniel Ivy, Simon Malvaez, Mongraffito (whose written erotic works also run through the issue), Sal Salandra, and Mark Alan. The issue features an interview with Mr Pink Chavy and a spotlight on MSTR Fetish Wear.
Fagsmafia is not just in the pages. He is on the cover. That is the editorial statement.
Get Your Copy
SNIFF Scent 2 is available now through The Male Muse store for $40. A digital edition is also available.
US customers: due to printer restrictions on mature content, US orders must be placed through the Blurb store.
Follow Fagsmafia on Instagram at @f4gsmafia and keep up with My Gay Eye at mygayeye.com.
