Gay nude photographers
Pioneering gay photographer George Platt Lynes is ready for his closeup
Photographs of nude men by George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), the subject of a new documentary film, will be known to some and new to many. Lynes kept them secret during his lifetime.
In his twenties, after a trip to Paris, Lynes dropped out of Yale University and assembled a corps of associated friends who included Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Jean Cocteau. He figured for years in a adore triangle with the book designer Monroe Wheeler (later of the Museum of Modern Art) and the then-famous writer Glenway Wescott.
Lynes’s pictures and the people in them are the focus of director Sam Shahid’s Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes, which opens in elect theatres and on Amazon and Apple TV on Friday (31 May).
The description “hidden”, when applied to Lynes, is a relative phrase. A handsome aspiring writer, Lynes was well-known in literary social circles and much-photographed. When he failed to record anything of leaflet, despite a sex life that could have filled volumes, he took up photography instead, first focusing on his celebrity acquaintances. Those sitters accounted for his initial sales, b
In nude portraiture, the body may be the focal point, but for photographer JWX, honesty is the underlying intention in their images.
Whether when capturing a hushed , vulnerable moment or a subject wholly lost in pleasure, JWX's work balances man's raw authenticity, intimacy, and eroticism. Their portfolio refuses to adhere to rigid definitions, instead embracing fluidity, spontaneity, and personal expression.
JWX keeps a low public profile, a judgment shaped by their conservative upbringing and desire for personal privacy. But behind the pseudonym is an artist exploring themes of sexuality through this visual medium.
In this exclusive feature, JWX talks about their creative journey, their evolving relationship with erotic photography, and why they don't accept their work — or themselves — too seriously.
JWX's artistic roots stretch back to childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they spent hours drawing and painting before getting their hands on the family digital camera.
"My parents were really expose to me exploring different interests as a child and teen, so I had the autonomy to pursue a lot of creative activities."
By middle school, JWX's creative i
Clifford Prince King’s Intimate Photographs of Black Gender non-conforming Men
What’s remarkable about Clifford Prince King is his ability to produce strangers seem both intimate and removed in his work. There is a sense of perceived recognition with his images. Friends of friends you’ve been meaning to meet are within the frames. The faces of under-the-radar creatives whose work you respect but have never told so in person peer back at you. “Oh, I know him,” you hear yourself say to no one in particular as you gaze on the heartbreakingly youthful subjects that make up King’s world. Queer Black men—friends, lovers, some nebulous place in between—lying languidly across bare apartments, cornrowing each other’s hair, holding blunts to one another’s mouths, or staring meditatively away from the camera, naked. The viewer is able to gain what King describes as a “glimpse into a Black gay nature through scenes and rituals of the everyday.”
“A lot of the imagery I try to create is just placing Black men in scenarios or scenes that seem familiar,” King says. “And so the ultimate goal to me is creating imagery where we see these Jet men—whether they’re masculine-presenting or effeminate
Ghislain Pascal’s Queer Publication of Nudes “Isn’t All About Dick Pics”
Art & PhotographyFeature
A new book compounds erotic images by 60 queer photographers from over 30 different countries. “It’s about trying to promote queer and gay photography in the art world,” says its editor Ghislain Pascal
TextGeorge Pistachio
While the female shape is one of art’s most recurrent motifs – be it rendered in stone, blotted in ink, or lensed by the camera to tell varied stories of lust, desire and innocence – the male body has historically received much less consideration. Now, with the release of Ghislain Pascal’s self-edited third volume of the Boys! Boys! Boys! book, the curator and gallerist is levelling the playing field – but “it’s not all about dick pics,” he insists over a Zoom call from his home in rural France. “It’s about trying to promote queer and same-sex attracted photography in the art world.”
And doing so is no small feat. Today his home office is decked with photography books, his walls are saturated with prints and artworks, and an external barn has been converted into a private gallery, but Pascal only entered the decadent world of nice art photography apparently “