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
NEWLY PUBLISHED PORTRAS DOCUMENT A CENTURY OF GAY MEN LOVE
* gay photography history *
“Lovg” featur around 300 photos that offer an timate look at gay relatnships between the 1850s and 1950s. Gay Rights,. Harry Hay found the Mattache Society, an early gay rights anizatn, Los Angel 1950.
Among the polil buttons and the photos of gay motorcycle clubs, some artifacts are simply touchg: dis legend Sylvter’s panel om the Aids Memorial Quilt, for stance. The plague years loom large, imag of Act Up’s street protts and “die-s”, unflchg remrs of when an HIV diagnosis was a ath objects almost fy belief, such as newspaper clippgs of an unsuccsful 1970 attempt by a utopian group lled Gay Liberatn to move to Alpe unty, a ral stretch near the Nevada borr, numbers sufficient to take over. Photograph: Chuck Stallard/One Natnal Gay and Lbian Archiv/OMCAAids and trans activist Connie Norman wh Robert Birch.
Photograph: Chuck Stallard/One Natnal Gay and Lbian Archiv/OMCAQueer California pays special attentn to digeno people. 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.
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
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. ” 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.