Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

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The gay handshake

May 11, 2024

(It’s about men going down on men, in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest)

A subtopic extracted from a posting (in preparation) on Stanley Stellar’s career in male photography (previous posting on this blog: on 5/8 in “Stanley Stellar’s couch”), during which he has amassed a trove of tens of thousands of photos, almost all set in NYC (and is still at it). One part of his work is devoted to depicting the beauty of the male body; for this he solicits men to pose for him (that’s why his e-mail address is on his website). These men are of various sexualities.

The remainder of his work he thinks of photographing the gay community:

— chronicling Pride parades (in all their complexity)

— showing street life in gay neighborhoods and at locations of gay sociability — both places populated by an assortment of lgbt+ people, plus some others

— and recording the places of cruising and tricking for men who have sex with men: what I’ve called the subterranean world of sex between men in public

This subterranean world: cruising spots in public parks, the famous trucks in NYC’s West Village back in the day, gay baths and sex clubs, t-rooms (mensrooms repurposed for sex between men), and so on — including Stellar’s special province, the West Side piers in NYC. All places where sex between men (especially cocksucking, which is quick and easy, and requires no special preparation or clean-up, so can be smoothly managed pretty much anywhere) is available in spaces that are in some sense public and are open to other like-minded men but are carefully concealed from outsiders (hence, subterranean).

(more…)

Posted in Art, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and society, Language and the body, Language of sex, Male art, Photography, Social interactions | Leave a Comment »

Stanley Stellar’s couch

May 8, 2024

This is a reposting, on this blog, of the complete content of a 5/2/11 AZBlogX posting “Stanley Stellar’s couch”, original link:

http://arnold-x-zwicky.livejournal.com/29466.html

The 2011 posting includes a link (still valid) to Stellar’s own website, which is packed with wonderful content and kept up to date, and even includes his gmail address, so that he can make himself available to men interested in being photographed by him.

Today’s blast from the past is relevant to the current moment: the 2024 edition of the international art show Frieze New York (May 1-5, 2024) included 15 historic photographs by Stellar reproduced for the first time  in color. As reported in the 5/4 New York Times:

Titled “The Piers: In Color,” the queer-centered TriBeCa gallery Kapp Kapp presented Stellar’s Kodachrome vision of New York City’s west side piers of the late 70s through 80s, a pre-AIDS paradise mostly remembered in black and white. Stellar’s color photographs recall a vibrancy and texture often omitted from visual history.

More Stellar in a posting to come. In this one it’s just the couch.

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Posted in Art, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Male art, Photography | Leave a Comment »

The joy of male love

February 4, 2024

This vintage candid photograph, hot and sweet, which came up in my Pinterest feed this morning:


A joyful embrace, possibly the prelude to a kiss, with mutual hand-on-body action — from the setting and the men’s clothing, from the US in the 1930s or 40s

A Google images search yielded a ton of repostings of the photo with the claim that it comes from Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s. This caused me to go through my copy of the book, page by page, three times, hoping to glean some information about the source of the photo. But it’s not there. It’s very much in the spirit of the photos that are there, but it’s not in the book.

Eventually I found a couple of sources that reproduced the photo, with notes that it was a candid of unknown origin. I was hoping to get it fixed in time and place, at least approximately. Of course, what I really long for is to know who these men were and what their story was, how they risked having their sexy photo taken (by whom?), out on a public street, in a time of grave hostility to homosexuality, especially male homosexuality. Was this a fling moment, or a snapshot from their clandestine life together? What were they like, what brought them together, what happened to them?

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Photography | Leave a Comment »

The rogue orchid

December 13, 2023

This is about the cymbidiums in my little patio container garden. They’re winter-blooming flowers in the local climate — normally, they send up their first shoots around Thanksgiving, as the weather grows cool and the rainy season approaches. This year, most of them behaved normally: around (American) Thanksgiving weekend, at the end of November, at least 7 shoots appeared, suddenly (it’s often hard to discern them among the foliage, so there might be more), and growing to a foot or more in length in a few days. The buds then open very slowly, about a month later (after New Year’s), but then the blossoms will last for months, the last finally succumbing when real heat returns, usually early in June.

Always the first to bloom is a very pretty yellow cultivar (I have several clones of it).

This year the autumn weather was deranged, with heat waves alternating with record cold snaps. My patio plants went berserk. The hydrangea decided it was spring, and produced several flower-heads in October. One, but only one, of the yellow cymbidiums decided it was winter, and sent up a stalk around Halloween, a whole month early. This rogue orchid is now splendidly blooming, a kind of Advent surprise — very cheering when many days are gloomy, foggy, or frost-flirting.

On Monday (12/11) Erick Barros took a ton of photos of Rogue Yellow, at various angles, orientations, and degrees of closeness, from which I have chosen two to show to you. (Winnowing the competitors down to two took a good bit of my time yesterday.)

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Posted in Language and plants, My life, Photography | 1 Comment »

A flagrantly gay Black Friday offer

November 24, 2023

(You can tell from the title that this posting will clearly not be to everyone’s taste, even if technically it doesn’t have to be shielded from kids.)

This striking composition of bodies (advertising flagrantly gay men’s underwear from Andrew Christian) in a HUNT Magazine e-mail offer today, 11/24:


The two men are posed as strongly differentiated in their roles, the black guy on the left as dominant, in charge, symbolically (and probably sexually) on top; the white guy on the right as submissive, subordinate, symbolically (and probably sexually) on the bottom — but evidently quite comfortable with his place, maybe even proud. If The Advocate magazine (“LGBTQ+ since 1967”) had an avant-garde wedding announcements section, this photo could be published there.

“Biggest Black Friday Ever” no doubt is a raunchy allusion to the fabled attractions of the BBC (Big Black Cock) — white guy sez, hey, I’ve got mine. (AC is often entertaining, but never subtle.)

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Male art, Photography, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

In the Heat of Summer

August 8, 2023

The title of a photo spread by photographer Jonathan Kim, of model Matteo Miretti, conveying the enervation of a hot summer day, on the Fashion Grunge site on 2/11/19. I was led to this spread by one photo from it on Pinterest yesterday, showing Miretti so knocked senseless by the heat that it looks like he’s been martyred to it:


(#1) Also, of course, showing the elegant musculature of his body; if this be death, he is beautiful in its repose

(more…)

Posted in Art, Clothing, Fashion, Male art, Photography | 2 Comments »

Jared unclothed

July 31, 2023

(Increasingly naked model, doing a cock tease sequence before full frontal nudity (not shown here, for WordPress modesty), but the beauty of his body, cock included, is admiringly discussed in plain language. So not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Yes, it’s ultimate July, 7/31. 🐅 🐅 🐅 three tigers to lead us out of the jungle of July. Tomorrow there will be the inaugural rabbits, but I fear August’s bunnies will all be demon creatures (cue Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog).

From Bill Stewart on 7/29 (Bill feeds me naked men every so often; they’re a hobby we share), an issue of Eroticco magazine featuring the model Jared, as photographed by Roger N.

Each issue of the magazine is a photo shoot, with no text whatsoever beyond the identification of the name of the model and the name of the photographer — in this case, just a (presumably professional) first name in the case of the model (who I’ve not been able to identify further in searches, but then I have little search-fu), first name and initial for the photographer (similarly obscure for me).

The thing about this shoot is that while it is in some sense gay porn, it’s executed with a high level of craft, on the part of both photographer (who sets up the shots and then composes the final photos) and model (who acts in this dramatic sequence, projecting a persona and engaging his viewers). Some of it is funny. Meanwhile, the final cock reveal turns out not to be about Jared’s cock; the cock is just an element of a larger composition that equally features Jared’s face (with a welcoming half-smile) and his perfectly sculpted torso. His cock, large and half-hard, fits the rest of his body perfectly; but large half-hard cocks can’t be viewed as elements of fine art, so I can’t show you the cock here, have to fuzz it out.

Now, the cover of the Eroticco issue. Then 7 shots from the larger sequence in the magazine, showing the full progression in the magazine’s layout. With commentary from me along the way.

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Posted in Art, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Male art, My life, Photography | 1 Comment »

Eight New York Couples, by Ethan James Green

July 29, 2023

A 2019 photography show, featured in AnOther magazine in “Eight New York Couples, Photographed by Ethan James Green” by Jack Moss on 11/6/19:

Tomorrow a beautiful new series from the American photographer goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition

American photographer Ethan James Green rose to prominence with his black-and-white portraiture of young people in New York City: a first monograph, Young New York, published by Aperture earlier this year, collected these images, the majority of which were photographed among the parks and housing projects of the city’s Lower East Side. The subjects, who connected to Green in various ways – from the city’s fashion and art scenes to social media – primarily came from New York’s youthful LGBTQ community, united by a rejection of conformity, in its various guises. “It is about me having fun with friends and allowing them to be seen as they want to be seen,” Green said at the time.

Now, a new untitled series by Green goes on show as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2019 exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, which opens to the public tomorrow. It marks Green’s return to the personal subject matter and style of Young New York, having spent the past year capturing increasingly high-profile figures – among them Joaquin Phoenix, Rihanna and RuPaul – for publications including American Vogue, Vanity Fair and W (Green has also contributed to both AnOther and Another Man, recently photographing Ashton Sanders for the cover of the latter). This new series, made up of eight monochrome portraits, each of a New York-based couple, is this year’s ‘In Focus’ display, a part of the Taylor Wessing exhibition which celebrates the work of an internationally renowned contemporary photographer.

Now: six of the eight couples. And then a note on the magazine from which this story comes.

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Annals of male art: embracing the statue

July 27, 2023

On Pinterest, this image of a man embracing a (male) statue:


Gay Pygmalion and the statue he loves

This from oatbug’s Tumblr account, where it’s dated 10/7/22, with the note:

reblogged from luvwish; originally from executed-deactivated20161004

But this last link is apparently now dead, so we don’t know who the ultimate creator of the image was, and what they had in mind. I post the image here because I find it moving (but then I’m a fool for same-sex affection of all sorts). And beautifully composed.

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Posted in Art, Homosexuality, Male art, Myths, Photography | Leave a Comment »

The male photography of Joseph Barrett

July 26, 2023

It’s all about male faces and the great variety of masculinities — there will be six pictures —  as explored by photographer Joseph Barrett (who I was first alerted to by a 7/24 Pinterest posting).

JB’s incredibly chaotic description of what he’s about, untouched by my hand (but with some elucidating comments of mine), from his website:

Joseph Barrett Photography: See more ideas about barrett joseph pennsylvania impressionist [a completely different artist from this Joseph Barrett]. Changing the masculine portrait. Finding the essence of man in portraiture [and Redefining the male gaze]

Joseph barrett photography. Freelance photographer at self employed photography freelance photographer at self employed photography norwich university of the arts. [Norwich University of the Arts, a public university in Norwich, Norfolk, UK] Traditional notions of masculinity have been thrown out of the window. In this interview he talks about breaking preconceived notions of masculinity in the context of the gender spectrum. … [barrett:] i think it is necessary for people to see photographs without implications of gender and sexual orientation for new masculinity

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Male art, Masculinity, Photography | Leave a Comment »

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