Touko Valio Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and for his influence on late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
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 Bellas was an influential photographer of male nudes. Bellas was well known under the pseudonym Bruce of Los Angeles.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf 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, vaginal or anal sex.
Tony Sansone was an Italian-American bodybuilder and model.
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 United States Supreme Court which held that magazines consisting largely of photographs of nude or near-nude male models are not obscene within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1461. It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter "nonmailable."
Nude photography is the creation of any photograph which contains an image of a nude or semi-nude person, or an image suggestive of nudity. Nude photography is undertaken for a variety of purposes, including educational uses, commercial applications and artistic creations. The exhibition or publication of nude photographs may be controversial, more so in some cultures or countries than in others, and especially if the subject is a minor.
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.
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.
Strength & Health was a bodybuilding/fitness/Olympic weightlifting magazine, one of the earliest magazines devoted to fitness and bodybuilding. Until the late 1960s, it was the most popular weightlifting magazine in the United States. It was published between 1932 and 1986 in 54 Volumes, a volume a year in 6 parts, published every 2–3 months.
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.
Grecian Guild Pictorial was an American physique magazine published from 1955 until 1968. While ostensibly dedicated to art, health, and exercise, like other physique magazines of the time, it was understood that, in practice, its homoerotic photography and illustrations were almost exclusively created by and for gay men. It differed from other physique magazines in its focus on themes and imagery from Ancient Greece, which was seen by many as a coded reference to homosexuality. It has been described as one of the "gayer" of the physique magazines.
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.
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.
