Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, who found the first gay magaze the U.S., Physique Pictorial, and specialized photographg buff young men.
Contents:
- THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
- 100 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY MEN LOVE
- ‘A FAY LIKE OURS’: PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERHOOD
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
* gay photo story *
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. “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. Or ’s an elrly gay person, or straight people – the whole gamut, ” Treadwell said.
Photographs by Matthew MorrocLike many gay men searchg for timacy the morn day, the photographer Matthew Morroc has found his share of onle. Many of his panns had survived both the AIDS crisis and heights of homophobia unknown to younger generatns.
His notn of gayns was rmed by a “Co of Behavr” that he rerd his high-school diary: “More mascule at all tim. ” 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.
NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
Author-photographer Jenn LeBlanc hop to normalize gay imagery The Spare and the Heir. * gay photo story *
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.
100 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY MEN LOVE
There's nothg like a good gay photo. You n hardly turn around a gallery whout bumpg to a photo that was eher snapped by a queer person or one for a subject: om Calyn Jenner's portra by Annie Leibovz to the provotive works of Robert Mapplethorpe to the geni of Andy Warhol, Cathere Opie, and Pierre and Gill. Maybe there's somethg queer about the photograph, the transformatn om a subject to an object a flash. Or maybe all our years of takg selfi for Grdr prepared for the job. In any se, what mak the gay photo gay is the look levels at the viewer: We are ed to beg seen, but now we n look back. * gay photo story *
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.
” 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. Pri trac s roots back to the gay rights movement of the 1960s. Public monstratns advotg for equaly for the gay muny also occurred Los Angel, as well as a “Gay In” San Francis at Goln Gate Park.
‘A FAY LIKE OURS’: PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERHOOD
“Boys Will Be Boys” by AY is onle at BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! promotg queer and gay photography. * gay photo story *
The term gay pri me about durg the time of the first melancholy one-day march, before they transformed over the years to the joyo month-long event that has bee an ternatnal celebratn of diversy and dividual eedom. Photoshoots of romantic partners highlight the love between gay upl. Far too often, gay people have felt like “some kd of animal a zoo, ” says Farr.
Gay Erotic Stori. That’s so gay!