Beefke imagery was appropriated by the gay muny for s own benefs to bee a visual ttimony of same-sex sire durg the pre-Stonewall era.
Contents:
* male beefcake *
The artist’s famo playful, homoerotic them are certaly already there, but nsir the time and place. Homosexualy was, after all, still illegal Great Bra then, not that stopped Hockney om ttg society’s lims while still enrolled at the Royal College of Art.
Beefke Photography & the Gay Communy: 1940s to 1960s. The beefke imagery was quickly appropriated by the gay muny to bee a visual ttimony of same-sex sire durg the pre-Stonewall era. By the 1940s, a wi variety of homoerotic imagery had begun to be available to a wi public through male fns or physique publitns.
Magaz such as Physique Pictorial, heavily illtrated wh sexy photos of bodybuilrs, were g fns as a pretext and were maly targetg a largely unrground gay subculture. At the end of the 1950s, photo studs such as Bob Mizer’s fluential Athletic Mol Guild (AMG), the Wtern Photography Guild, and Spartan of Hollywood emerged and gradually dropped the pretense of physil culture or bodybuildg tert to market their photographs (somewhat) more openly to gay nsumers. This was soon to be followed the 1960s by an unrground dtry promotg a more erotic versn of this type of imagery for s gay muny mostly through anonymo mail orrs at a time when the productn, distributn, and also posssn of homosexual imagery was illegal.