Naked Men is an erotically charged spectacle of photographs taken by George Platt Lynes and the PAJAMA group from the thirties, forties and fifties. Primarily it provides an important contribution to the history of representations of the male body in the twentieth century, introducing us to the first nude male photographic models. From the hijacking of Classical aestheticism which veiled male desire behind the legitimate order of art to the surrealist photomontage which challenged the 'coherent' male body.
Secondly, and more importantly, the volume charts the permissible and private worlds of gay America, offering an insight into a community of mutual admiration, friendship and love whose members led complex sexual lives in a period where being open about one's sexuality was often problematic. Hints of the group's internal homophobia, and often fraught polygamy come through the accompanying interviews.
Unsurprisingly a bag of mixed emotions comes with this book which makes it such an interesting view. It surprises you when you least expect it. its kinky like that. A now familiar picture story of two lovers making out on a bed is made startling by a close up of the lovers faces which shows their eyelids stuck down with sellotape. This poignantly highlights the shame surrounding the act and depiction of gay sex whilst it simultaneously demonstrates how daring both sitters and photographer were. The knowledge that today's mainstream men's magazines would have enormous problems publishing virtually any image within this collection, despite many of the photographs being taken forty years ago, enhances its radical nature.
The period photographs are stunning, tender lighting in the solo studio portraits is counterpoised with sundrenched beach group photographs with their air of freedom and happiness. Platt Lynes is revealed as an inspiration to contemporary photographers such as Bruce Webber, Herb Ritts and Robert Mapplethorpe. These photographers have made the male nude more readily acceptable, but the naked toned torso of the twentysomething with its obligatory sixpack has become a must physically and a bore visually. Accompanying articles which invite us to 'Have the body of a 26 year old at 40' reveal the contradiction of an impossible desire to resist the ageing process whilst permitting neither a body nor a sexuality, beyond this imaginary, but none the less persuasive threshold.
This book provides the perfect cultural antidote, for the period centrepieces are accompanied by recent portraits of the same sitters. Nancy Rica Schiff's portrait of Glenway Westcott and Monroe Wheeler is so simple in its composition, with both men in shirt and tie sat in their study, yet it possesses an extraordinary eroticism.
Both men were in their seventies when this photograph was taken and in contrast to many of the other pictures where we enjoy the averted gaze of the subject, this captures a mischievous sexuality blossoming with age. Their address is a come on to the viewer. They demand and promise a return for your investment. Sex and sensibility are very much alive, the only question is are you up to it?
In spite of this stunning example, the remaining contemporary portraits pose as many questions as they answer and become for me, the only element that lets this collection down. For as long as we equate an idea of age with a beauty that is somehow and merely 'concentrated in their faces, which are full of character, reflecting a deep understanding of life' the Male Nude remains preserved as hermetically sealed from the ageing process. The optical unconscious of this is that we should be spared the overspill, the sags and wrinkles of age. Whilst demonstrating how some taboos were beautifully broken, this book unwittingly has the tendency to perpetuate others.
But still, leave it lying around the house and marvel at the disappearing act it performs every twenty minutes.
Jon Carnall
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
