The Illicit Story of London’s Postwar Homosexual Visible Tradition

It’s extensively accepted that the jockstrap turned a logo of queer tradition in Fifties America – popularised by Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial journal, which was first printed in 1951. Nevertheless in Keith Vaughan’s early pictures, shot at Highgate Males’s Pond in 1933, a counter-narrative emerges, as at the least one among his group fashions a equally revealing-yet-concealing piece of underwear. “This challenges that historical past in a extremely attention-grabbing means,” asserts the curator and Central Saint Martins professor Alistair O’Neill, whose new present, A Laborious Man is Good to Discover! at The Photographers’ Gallery, will exhibit Vaughan’s album of swimmers and sunbathers for the primary time. 

“He was 21, printing the images in his bed room,” continues O’Neill. “They might have been used as incriminating proof in opposition to him – he might have been imprisoned for taking these photographs – so it’s wonderful this physique of labor survived.” Comprised of over 100 photographs made between the Thirties and Nineteen Nineties, a lot of the work that options within the present was knowledgeable by equally obstructive legalities, made after the 1955 Wolfenden Report and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised homosexual sexual exercise, however in opposition to the backdrop of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act, which made the making and sharing of photographs depicting homosexuality a legal offence. Successfully initiating a covert visible tradition amongst homosexual males, the respective legal guidelines formed a group that married invisible practices with putting physique varieties. 

O’Neill’s analysis started in 2002, when he curated an anniversary present for the Queer Nation membership evening, celebrating homosexual clubbing because the Second World Battle (launched within the early 90s, the evening borrowed its moniker from a splinter group of ACT UP). “It made me realise that there have been pockets [of surviving history], however lots of it had not survived by means of types of queer erasure – topics involved about issues being was proof, or cultural establishments misinterpreting that sort of materials,” he says. Subsequently, round 80 per cent of the work on present has been loaned from personal collectors. “Which is kind of uncommon and actually essential – with out them lots of this materials wouldn’t have survived. Even when amassing, they went to museums, which all stated no. Fortunately the tide has turned, and exhibitions like Queer British Artwork at Tate Britain have proven the significance of those practitioners and their work.” 

Riffing on the beefcake aesthetics of Mizer’s Athletic Mannequin Guild, the present foregrounds work by Cecil Beaton, Man Burch and Ajamu X, that includes nameless photos of the Portobello Boys from the 50s, a portrait of Monotosh Roy, the primary Asian man to win Mr Universe (in 1951), and avenue portraits made round Euston within the 80s. Whereas sourced from throughout the UK, London may be very a lot the nucleus, with key areas for males in search of males to {photograph} mapped throughout the boroughs. “London was actually the centre of manufacturing for this sort of imagery,” observes O’Neill. “There’s one thing about large-scale, metropolitan cities facilitating these same-sex encounters – it’s an essential a part of how queer tradition manifests, in massive cities versus extra distant, smaller areas.”

“The challenge is making an attempt to develop a framework for taking a look at this sort of imagery that doesn’t place artists on one aspect of the room and physique photographers on the opposite,” he continues, alluding to conventional inventive groupings. “It’s placing all of them collectively, so completely different characters rub up in opposition to one another in ways in which you may not have anticipated.” Regardless of echoing a quote attributed to Mae West, the present’s title was truly lifted from a list sheet listing of photographer John S Barrington. “I simply thought it was humorous; it’s provocative, risqué. I used to be additionally making an attempt to galvanise this concept that physique pictures represents this splendid of masculinity – that could be a onerous physique,” notes the curator.

Culminating within the final decade earlier than social media and on-line courting, A Laborious Man is Good to Discover! presents a marker of particular visible developments in homosexual areas. “By the top of the twentieth century, physique pictures was changed by pornography, so it’s about that, but additionally the legacy of Aids and the way it decimated these communities,” says O’Neill. “It’s each actually, and the British story just isn’t well-known in any respect – there are compendiums of Physique Pictorial – however this deserves the time and house.” Unfold throughout the capital over 60 years, what O’Neill hadn’t anticipated was the natural thread that runs by means of the present. “Every part is amazingly interconnected in methods I by no means had anticipated. There’s {a photograph} of the artist Patrick Procktor taken by Cecil Beaton in 1967. Within the background there are two life fashions, then two males on the opposite aspect of Patrick’s shoulder – one of many males is definitely Vaughan. I didn’t know he bore any relationship to Procktor, in order that was wonderful.”

A Laborious Man is Good to Discover! is on present at The Photographers’ Gallery in London till 11 June 2023.