Gathered here are 127 beautiful and provocative duotone photographs that reflect the wide-ranging history of male homoeroticism as revealed by the camera--amply suggesting spiritual, physical, and intellectual exchange between men. To accompany these images, Ellenzweig offers a detailed account of the multiple and complex meanings of the homoerotic, from the 1850s to today.

Holland Day portrayed classical ideals through images of male beauty and bonding, while the work of early twentieth-century photographers - Brassai, for example - showed the influences of the homosexual subculture and of Freud on photography. Modernists and Surrealists, represented by photographers George Platt Lynes and Herbert List, captured the artistic spirit of the late twenties and thirties. Later, the kinship created by war and the conflicting standards imposed by the post-World War II era were reflected in Minor White's spiritual artistry. Out of the rebellious sixties came the contemporary camera work of Arthur Tress, Duane Michals, and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as the ongoing photographic studies of such artists as George Dureau and Chantal Regnault

Waugh identifies four primary aspects of homoerotic photography and film - the artistic, the commercial, the illicit, and the politico-scientific - tracing their development against a background of advances in visual technology. This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the visual imagery in addition to its production, circulation, and consumption.

The thrill, the spectacle--full-color gay erotic photographs, in 3-D.

This comprehensive study of homoeroticism and male homosexuality surveys the homoerotic urge in fashion photography, including layouts in Vogue and reprints rare and unpublished work by such photographers as Horst, Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts.

George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye is a life of the gregarious American portrait, dance, fashion, and male nude photographer whose career spanned the late 1920s to 1955. From age 18, Lynes entered the cosmopolitan world of the American expatriate community in Paris when he became acquainted with the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Intending to pursue a literary and small press publishing career, Lynes also began photographing authors like Stein, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Colette. Soon, he turned exclusively to photography, establishing himself as one of the premier fashion photographers in the Condé Nast stable, documenting the early ballets of George Balanchine, and pursuing his private obsession with seductive images of young male nudes almost never published in his time. Lynes's private life was as glamorous and theatrical as his images with their brilliant studio lighting and dramatic Surrealist set-ups. Barely out his teens, he met the publisher Monroe Wheeler who was already in a relationship with the emerging expatriate novelist Glenway Wescott. The peripatetic threesome maintained a polyamorous connection that lasted some 15 years. Their New York apartment became a mecca for elegant cocktail and name-dropping dinner parties. Their ménage-à-trois complicates our understanding of the pre-Stonewall gay closet. This biography, drawing upon intimate letters and an unpublished memoir of Lynes's life by his brother, writer and editor Russell Lynes, paints a portrait of the emerging influence of gays and lesbians in the visual, literary, and performing arts that defined transatlantic cosmopolitan culture and presaged later gay political activism.

An overview of gay art from the beginning of recorded time to the present--a groundbreaking work of nuanced scholarship encompassing all genres in all ages on gay themes. 145 photos, 32 in color.