Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
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.
Jean Daniel Cadinot was a French photographer, and director/producer of gay pornographic films. His photography focused on homoerotic imagery, and his films are noted for their emphasis on plot and realism.
J.D.s was a Canadian queer punk zine which started in 1985 and ran for eight issues until 1991. The zine was co-authored by G.B Jones and Bruce LaBruce and is credited as being one of the first and most influential queer zines. The zine's content was centred around anarchic queer-punk themes and heavily discussed queer-skewed punk music from the late 1980s.
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 together with business partner Lou Thomas 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.
Rites was a Canadian magazine, published for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities in Canada from 1984 to 1992.
William Ward (1927–1996) was a British erotic artist. He is best known for his strips featuring bear-like men and in particular his Adventures of Drum series for Drummer magazine.
Siegessäule is Berlin's most widely distributed queer magazine and has been published monthly, except for two brief hiatuses, since April 1984. Originally only available in West Berlin, it ran with the subtitle "Berlin's monthly page for Gays". In 1996, it was broadened to include lesbian content, and in 2005 it was expanded to reach a wider queer target base, becoming the only magazine of its scale in Europe to represent the full spectrum of the LGBT community. The magazine is available for free at around 700 locations in Berlin, printing 53.688 copies per month. Since March-issue 2013, it has been overseen by chief editor Jan Noll.
Gay was Toronto's first gay magazine, published almost simultaneously with ASK Newsletter, together among Canada's first gay magazines. The magazine was first printed on 30 March 1964. The earliest periodical anywhere to use "Gay" in its title. Produced by four Toronto men in a commercial venture, the Gay Publishing Company, Gay ran "serious" articles, letters to the editor, a diary, gossip columns, a feature called the "Gabrial Club", poetry, fiction, politics and a discreet personal column. Gay was illustrated, usually with photographs of drag queens, but also including physique photography.
Jeremy Constantine Lucido is an American artist, blogger, photographer, zine publisher and film director who runs a photography studio located in Los Angeles, California.
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.
Domingo Francisco Juan Esteban "Dom" Orejudos, Secundo, also widely known by the pen names Etienne and Stephen, was an openly gay artist, ballet dancer, and choreographer, best known for his ground-breaking gay male erotica beginning in the 1950s. Along with artists George Quaintance and Touko Laaksonen —with whom he became friends—Orejudos' leather-themed art promoted an image of gay men as strong and masculine, as an alternative to the then-dominant stereotype as weak and effeminate. With his first lover and business partner Chuck Renslow, Orejudos established many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, including the Gold Coast bar, Man's Country bathhouse, the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago's August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was also active and influential in the Chicago ballet community.
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.
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.
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.
