Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, who found the first gay magaze the U.S., Physique Pictorial, and specialized photographg buff young men.
Contents:
- NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
- THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- PNEERG PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY LIFE THE 1960S
- MAN TO MAN: A HISTORY OF GAY PHOTOGRAPHY (MALE PHOTOGRAPHY) - HARDVER
NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
Immediately after the Stonewall rts, 1969, photographer Anthony Friedk began documentg LGBT life his groundbreakg Gay Essay, now on exhib at the Young Mm. In the s sce, photographers have ntued to explore and expand the meang of queer inty. Works by the 12 artists this album illumate them om those turbulent years. * the history of gay photography *
“Lovg” featur around 300 photos that offer an timate look at gay relatnships between the 1850s and 1950s. It is not entirely happenstance that the foundg figure of the morn gay movement, Harvey Milk, was a photographer and the owner of a mera store. At my current age of 55, I still remember the embarrassg stg of a film store’s refal to procs pictur of my 23rd (very gay) birthday party bee the prter emed the imag “cent.
Anthony Friedk’s photographs -- pecially his Gay Essay (1969-1973), now on exhib at the Young Mm a show timed for the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall rts -- assume exactly such a sympathetic stance. In the years immediately after Stonewall, pictur of ordary gay people leadg ordary liv were nothg short of extraordary. The onslght of AIDS the early 1980s shifted the parameters of gay male photographic possibily.
The betiful male body, once a source of unabashed pri for gay photographers, was now tged wh sadns and even ma to a vector of fectn by those hostile to gay rights.
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
* the history of gay photography *
His gaze was, at the time, the most homoerotic to date mastream fashn and advertisg, yet the prospect of actual sex is excised. In his more aggrsively homoerotic photos, we see an array of fac and bodi that are hardly mol betiful. In the years sce Friedk’s Gay Essay, the mere assertn of gay prence has been supersed by a photographic exploratn to what that prence actually means.
Katz is the print and chief curator of the new Llie Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art, New York Cy, and directs the doctoral program Visual Studi at the Universy at Buffalo. His notn of gayns was rmed by a “Co of Behavr” that he rerd his high-school diary: “More mascule at all tim.
PNEERG PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY LIFE THE 1960S
Anthony Friedk photographed gay culture California the 1960s * the history of gay photography *
” Among his mols were the gay and the straight, profsnal bodybuilrs and profsnal beach bums, llege stunts and returne om the European ont.
But there’s jt as much reason to nsir Mizer the gay Hugh Hefner—a tirels llector of physil specimens. In 1951, he found what is generally nsired the untry’s origal gay magaze, Physique Pictorial, and would ntue publishg for nearly four s**.
** In the magaze’s early years he clud no explic referenc to gay inty, though he thored d edorials agast the hypocrisi of the straight world. Although gays had long been si-eyeg the emblems of straight masculy, Mizer fed them wh new meang: the very men who had looked stoic and impassive the straight magaz seemed, unr Mizer’s directn, to be havg fun. When David Hurl, the gay pornographer and Mizer protégé, was a teen-ager Ccnati, he glimpsed Physique Pictorial_ _at a newsstand and felt, as he put to Taschen, “stantly clud, as if the men were beckong him to look.
MAN TO MAN: A HISTORY OF GAY PHOTOGRAPHY (MALE PHOTOGRAPHY) - HARDVER
A look back at a major turng pot the stggle for gay rights * the history of gay photography *
” It appealed, Coat wrote, “to the sick half-world of homosexuals, sadists, and masochists. “Homosexualy was the standard way of life among the gged Greek warrrs, ” he wrote 1960. ” Dpe such objectns, he reportedly ma a fortune the eighti by distributg so-lled “ssn vios, ” rerdgs of photo shoots that then veered to more recreatnal Mizer’s Greek-warrr fixatn, ’s temptg to thk of him as one early source of the “body fascism” for which ntemporary gay-male culture is often maligned.
Mizer’s achievement, as a photographer and a publisher, was to take the standards of male bety as they existed and prove that gay men uld satisfy them, and be satisfied by them, too.
Taken around 1920, showed two men ont of a hoe, posg a lovg embrace at a time when beg gay was not only owned upon but effectively illegal.
Man to Man: A History of Gay Photography (Male Photography) by Pierre Borhan - ISBN 10: 0865651868 - ISBN 13: 9780865651869 - Vendome Prs - 2007 - Hardver * the history of gay photography *
“It’s very heart-warmg and gratifyg to know that ’s meangful, and that this spans om someone who’s 18 or 20 right up to grandparents who are lookg at (the pictur) bee their grandchildren are gay. “I was 19, vulnerable, young and puttg my own inty together, ” says photographer Anthony Friedk when reflectg on his first project, The Gay Essay, which documents gay culture Los Angel and San Francis between 1969-1972.
What started, as a self-assigned project for a young photographer growg up Hollywood has now bee one of the most thentic portras of gay life Ameri om this perd. In 1969, the same year as the Stonewall rts New York Cy, a gay cultural revolutn was growg Ameri.
At the time, most pictns of gay men and women mastream media were found salac newspaper and tabloid articl, all of them reported om a murky distance. LIFE’s two-part seri Homosexualy Ameri om 1964, featured dark and shadowy photographs by Bill Eppridge. While growg up Hollywood, Freidk’s parents worked the film dtry and had close iends that led full openly gay liv.