Last week saw the lnch of The Ltle Black Gallery's new queer photography magaze BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!. The llectors edn Volume 1 featur the work of ten photographers om ten untri and adds to the growg BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! art platform "to promote queer and gay photography", which now reprents more than 60 photographers om 24 untri cludg…
Contents:
- THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! LNCH QUEER PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZE
- NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
- 100 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY MEN LOVE
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, who found the first gay magaze the U.S., Physique Pictorial, and specialized photographg buff young men. * gay photography class *
Four s ago, the photographer Tom Bianchi began pturg the nearly 10,000 gay men who every summer flocked to their En a specific part of New York’s Fire Island. Photograph by Matthew Morroc.Matthew Morroc“This photograph serv as the ver of my photo book, Complic, which tells the story of relatnships wh olr gay men New York om 2010 to 2015.
Photograph by Ey Manng.Ey Manng“The first gay pri was a rt—not a logo, psule llectn, or rabow Shake Shack l.
BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! LNCH QUEER PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZE
The dashgly charmg -founr of the Llie-Lohman Mm v si his SoHo apartment—an unbelievable monument to gay creativy and art. " data-reactroot=" * gay photography class *
Photograph by Chris Smh.Chris Smh“I remember that some of my earlit self-portras, taken while I was high school and still eply closeted, seemed like the only way that I uld privately exprs and see myself as the gay man that I knew I was. 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. 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.
NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY 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 photography class *
” 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.
"Around three years ago, I was workg on the layout of a book about physique photography wh photos om the 1950s, whose athetics and visual worlds were clearly tend to appeal to a gay dience. In the urse of this work, I asked myself: what would a book wh ntemporary gay and queer photography look like?
100 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY MEN LOVE
* gay photography class *
"Around that time, I beme aware of the works of Matt Lambert and Florian Hetz, and I started to look for other gay and queer photographers. Indulgg their sire for self-prentatn, affirmatn, and reflectn, many photographers portray male homosexualy particular as a private idyll.
However, a number of documentary photographers provi evince that beg gay or lbian n still lead to margalizatn, isolatn, stigmatizatn, and vlence certa untri and muni. 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. The enigmatic actor, art llector, gay activist, globetrotter, and doyenne of the SoHo scene has, along wh his late partner J.
“Boys Will Be Boys” by AY is onle at BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! promotg queer and gay photography. * gay photography class *
Together, the pair found the Llie-Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art—the first stutn of s kd—which is down the block, on Wooster, unassumg Llie happened to poke his head out to the hallway to terme the e of the ck; before he uld shut the door, a group om the art magaze I worked for had charged their way through.
This somewhat jad crew of crics was ankly awed to fd every available surface the dky, crimson Prce Street loft absolutely vered—let me repeat: vered—wh explicly homoerotic art all styl and media, cludg var se-specific murals. At the start of his and Lohman’s llectg days, more than 60 years ago, “gay imagery was unfortunately the hands of pornographers exclively, ” Llie lamented.
Photo by Max Burkhalter for wi-rangg llectn gently illtrat the changg landspe of public gay life and the civil rights advanc crementally gaed sce he began discreetly buyg homoerotic art the 1950s. It is only the last three s that homosexualy has gaed legal protectns the Uned Stat.