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
- 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
* 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. 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.
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 *
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
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 *
In 1951, he found what is generally nsired the untry’s origal gay magaze, Physique Pictorial, and would ntue publishg for nearly four s**.
100 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY MEN LOVE
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… * gay photography class *
** 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.
“Boys Will Be Boys” by AY is onle at BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! promotg queer and gay photography. * gay photography class *
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.