The Athletic Model Guild, or AMG, was a physique photography studio founded by Bob Mizer in December 1945. During those post-war years, United States censorship laws allowed women, but not men, to appear in various states of undress in what were referred to as "art photographs". Mizer began his business by taking pictures of men that he knew. His subjects would often pose for pictures which illustrated fitness tips and the like, but were also viewed as homoerotic material.
Bruce Harry Bellas was an American photographer. He was influential in his work with male physiques and nudes. Bellas was well known under the pseudonym Bruce of Los Angeles.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines or sex magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is the case in softcore pornography, and, in the usual case of hardcore pornography, depictions of masturbation, oral, manual, vaginal, or anal sex.
Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homosexuality" implies a more permanent state of identity or sexual orientation. It has been depicted or manifested throughout the history of the visual arts and literature and can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic person."
Jim French was an American artist, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher. He is best known for his association with Colt Studio which he, using the pseudonym Rip Colt, created in late 1967. Thomas parted from the endeavor in 1974 leaving French to continue to build what would become one of the most successful gay male erotica companies in the U.S.
Physique magazines or beefcake magazines were magazines devoted to physique photography — that is, photographs of muscular "beefcake" men – typically young and attractive – in athletic poses, usually in revealing, minimal clothing. During their heyday in North America in the 1950s to 1960s, they were presented as magazines dedicated to fitness, health, and bodybuilding, with the models often shown demonstrating exercises or the results of their regimens, or as artistic reference material. However, their unstated primary purpose was erotic imagery, primarily created by and for gay men at a time when homosexuality was the subject of cultural taboos and government censorship.
MANual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, 370 U.S. 478 (1962), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that magazines consisting largely of photographs of nude or near-nude male models are not considered "obscene" within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1461, which prohibits the mailing of obscene material. It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter "nonmailable".
George Quaintance was an American artist, famous for his "idealized, strongly homoerotic" depictions of men in mid-20th-century physique magazines. Using historical settings to justify the nudity or distance the subjects from modern society, his art featured idealized muscular, semi-nude or nude male figures; Wild West settings were a common motif. His artwork helped establish the stereotype of the "macho stud" who was also homosexual, leading him to be called a "pioneer of a gay aesthetic". He was an influence on many later homoerotic artists, such as Tom of Finland.
Herman Lynn Womack (1923–1985) was an American publisher, and the founder of Guild Press, a Washington, D.C., publishing house that catered almost exclusively to a gay male audience and played a major role in expanding the legal protections for gay publications against obscenity laws in the United States.
Albert J. Urban, Jr. (1917-1992) was an American physique photographer. His work appeared widely in physical culture and physique magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. Scholar Thomas Waugh described Urban as one of the "pillars of the postwar golden age of gay physique culture".
Robert Henry Mizer was an American photographer and filmmaker, known for pushing boundaries of depicting male homoerotic content with his work in the mid 20th century.
Rick Cassidy was an American pornographic actor, model and bodybuilder. He appeared in both straight and gay porn films, using the name Jim Cassidy for the latter, during the early 1970s.
Grecian is an adjective referring to artefacts or culture of Ancient Greece.
Alonzo "Lon" Hanagan was an American physique photographer during the 1940s and 1950s. He produced erotic images of men under the alias "Lon of New York", or simply "Lon".
Physique Pictorial is an American magazine, one of the leading beefcake magazines of the mid-20th century. During its run from 1951 to 1990 as a quarterly publication, it exemplified the use of bodybuilding culture and classical art figure posing, as a cover for homoerotic male images, and to evade charges of obscenity.
Tomorrow's Man was a digest size physique magazine published from 1952 to 1971. It was one of the first physique magazines, debuting a year after Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial. It was the creation of Irvin ("Irv") Johnson, a Chicago gym owner and trainer. As of 1957, it had the highest circulation of any physique magazine in the United States. It was the first of many physique magazines to feature the artwork of Dom Orejudos. Tomorrow's Man was initially edited by William Bunton, who went on to work for competing magazine VIM in May 1954.
Physique photography is a tradition of photography of nude or semi-nude men which was largely popular between the early 20th century and the 1960s. Physique photography originated with the physical culture and bodybuilding movements of the early 20th century, but was gradually co-opted by homosexual producers and consumers, who favoured increasingly homoerotic content. The practiced reached its height in the 1950s and early 1960s with the inception of physique magazines, which existed largely to showcase physique photographs and were widely consumed by a mostly-gay audience.
TWO, subtitled The Homosexual Viewpoint in Canada, was a Toronto gay magazine published between 1964 and 1966. It combined physique photography with a variety of editorial content including articles, reviews of local gay nightlife, and fiction. TWO was one of Toronto's first gay magazines, and was among the first magazines to combine the pictorial content of the physique genre with overtly gay editorial content.
John S. Barrington (1920-1991) was a British physique photographer and publisher. Barrington's photos of nude or semi-nude men appeared widely in British and American physique magazines, sometimes under the pseudonym John Paignton. Barrington published many of his own physique magazines, including Male Model Monthly, the first in Britain. He also published a number of books related to photography and anthropometry. Barrington was a prolific artist and publisher, and by 1984 was said to have published more nude titles than any other individual in Europe or the United States.
Russ Warner (1917–2004) was an American physique photographer. His photographs of bodybuilders appeared widely in physique and bodybuilding magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. His photography studio was initially located in Oakland California; he later relocated to the Los Angeles area.
