The Boys Are Back in Town
A Brief Photographic History of the Male Nude
While the female nude has played an obvious role in Western iconography, the male nude has not always enjoyed such attention or acceptance. This ode to the male physique is a tribute to this evolving and once illicit art form, from anonymous 19th-century erotica to the contemporary work of David Hockney and Duane Michaels.
Through the classical, the playful, and the provocative, it revisits the compositions, postures, and role-playing of this underexplored genre. It showcases the work of prominent masters such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes, and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, famous for his homoerotic images of nude young men in classical poses in Sicily. Also included are illustrations from the magazine Physique Pictorial, which spearheaded the gay scene of the mid-1950s and pioneered homosexual-themed publishing.
