Long before that risqué Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, gays were experimenting with homoerotic photography. Author Pierre Borhan celebrates the searing and sexy images in his new book, Man to Man.

By Andrew Clarke

Man to Man’s pages celebrate our multi-textured gay culture while revealing and examining it through images both startling and thought provoking. Bold, constantly evolving expressions of homoeroticism have informed photography from its very beginnings. Before the Internet, iPods and YouTube there was the still camera. Interestingly, gay men were among the earliest to embrace the medium of photography, seizing on it — at first slowly — as a non-verbal means of revealing themselves.

Carnal desires and sensual dreams color Pierre Borhan’s Man to Man — A History of Gay Photography, a well-researched look at male sexuality as documented on camera. As this photographic history demonstrates, gay men were early proponents of documenting their desires and affections. Man to Man utilizes archival as well as modern day photographs to depict the ways this art form forces us, as individuals and as a group, to examine ourselves. Photographic imagery and its power thus increase twofold. The images serve as a means of arousing our lusts and desires, yet also manage to affect and reflect profound political and social changes in gay culture.

Homoerotic content in photography has enabled us to capture and preserve images as diverse as those of fully-clothed loggers posed in surreptitious embrace in grainy studio shots from the 1880s to photos of naked men, often with prominent erections, lithe and graceful as they perform oral sex in well-lit outdoor settings in shots dating from 1910. From its inception photography has served as a public forum for exposing our closeted lives. A potent form of non-verbal communication, it provides us a means to catch the proverbial “lightning in a bottle.” Today as attitudes and public perception move forward, provocatively posed bare-assed men, with oiled well-muscled bodies, “hawk” products in mainstream advertising arenas like mid-city billboards, homo-eroticizing such established brand names as Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein.

We have truly, err ... come a long way, baby!

Borhan offers a historical perspective on photographs for, by and of gay men. He charts the first of three major movements in the history of gay photography as taking place from 1840 to 1918. He calls this period “the slow emergence of homosexuality in photography.” As homosexuality surfaced in countries throughout the world, Borhan tells us, the courageous individuals who battled for their freedom and dignity faced arduous “religious and moral condemnation of the majority.” During this time of social constraints there were voices that prevailed. American poet Walt Whitman expressed regret for the lack of a suitable name describing “the hot-blooded” relationship between two men. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) refers to these bonds as “an unspeakable passionate love.” On athletic teams and in sporting competitions, restraints began to relax. The sport of boxing as well as boating allowed several early photographers opportunities to make studies of physical confrontations which, the author observes, often led to “other more clandestine and exhilarating interpretations.” The resulting photographic studies were undoubtedly shared in very select circles of men of similar interests.

Sharing of previously forbidden artistic and erotic materials played a large part in what Borhan classifies as the second phase in the history of gay photography. He calls this period “the photographer’s choice: Suppression or Emancipation.” Borhan assigns the period from 1918 through 1969 to this second stage. From the late 1920s through the ’30s, moral codes and attitudes began relaxing in Europe, particularly Germany and Switzerland. Several British and German amateur photographers had already discovered the joys and freedoms of pursuing their art in southern Italy, where the young men of Naples, Sicily and the Amalfi coast saw no stigma to offering themselves to photographers, thereby earning money from their physical attractions. According to Borhan, German, British, French and even “a few American lovers of both art and virile youth” made journeys to southern Italy. Wilhelm von Gloeden, the son of a Prussian aristocrat, was among the noteworthy photographers who took up residence there. Many of von Gloeden’s sensual and striking black and white photographs are on view in Man to Man. An undeniable pioneer in homoerotic photography, von Gloeden’s stunning photographs from 1890-1912 are notable for breaches of public taste and morality. Borhan calls von Gloeden the first photographer to “prefer a little immorality to a lot of boredom.” Other notable gay photographers, including Edwin Townsend in the 1930s, made inroads with studies of well-lit bodybuilders as well as studies of nude male dances. Borhan focuses on the burgeoning interest in gay photography which reached new peaks around 1950. Just before 1950 the mail order distribution of magazines on physical culture and bodybuilding had moved to the forefront of homosexual photography. Post World War II, the morality of the American and European populace had further relaxed. Experiences as soldiers had placed large numbers of men into intimate contact with other men. The resulting effects included a loosening of modesty and inhibitions. It additionally resulted in what the author terms “the most unexpected physical relations.” After the war, few homosexuals practiced gymnastics or bodybuilding, but this didn’t limit their interest in buying “physical culture” magazines like Physique Artistry and Sporting Arena, which encouraged men to transform their bodies into model physiques, using the best athletes of the day as examples. Photographer Bob Mizer was a pioneer in this field, opening his first studio in Los Angeles in 1945 and searching gyms and local beaches for muscular men suitable as subjects for the newly popular publications.

The June 1969 Stonewall Riots brought about a new era of homosexual freedom. Borhan categorizes our present era (from 1969 on) as one of independence and liberation. He labels the final section “art photographers declare their homosexuality.” Gay newspapers began appearing in New York and other cities, among the earliest, Gay Power billed itself as “New York’s first homosexual newspaper.” A collage by graphic artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, then age 22, appeared on an early Gay Power cover. The collage featured a bare-chested man wearing black leather boots. Positioned over his genital area is a red and white bulls-eye. Borhan characterizes this era by its free market for full male nudity. As indicative of the wonderful photos in this section, the late ’60s and early ’70s initiated a time when gay photography, freed of political and social restrictions, truly began to soar, featuring previously unseen attitudes and poses exhibiting defiance, uninhibited sexuality and joy.

Large scale and handsomely bound, Man to Man features iconic images, both evocative and erotic, by acclaimed gay photographers Herbert List, Mapplethorpe, Mizer, von Gloeden and modern masters Tom Bianchi, Jeff Palmer and the late Herb Ritts. In addition to these stimulating and explicit black and white photographs the coffee-table volume additionally features 150 shots in full color. Man to Man will be available in late October, naturally in hardcover.