A pioneer
Added 2022-04-15 08:30:01 +0000 UTCAs a gay man with more freedoms than I ever expected a gay man could have when I was a child, I'm very aware of the legacy that gay men from the 70's and 80's have left us through their refusal to be silenced.
As a photographer of the male figure there are pioneers that started to normalise and glamorise the male nude in photography in an undeniably homoerotic way. Where Andy Warhol had photographed erotic interactions of men, he had always portrayed himself as an outsider and rather asexual. Tom Bianchi was the exact opposite of that.
Tom captured the beefcake ideal men of the 80's and often photographed himself in the thick of the action. The casual homoerotic nudity that he captured in the photos above, in his backyard pool, is one of the earliest memories I have of discovering male nude photography and was probably part of my sexual awakening.
He may have pushed the sexual nature of his imagery further and further in the years after these images and they were for me, a bit too blatantly sexual and graphic without the finesse that makes these images special.
I will forever be grateful to the men like Tom and Herb Ritts who came first and forged the way forward.
