At the end of the 19th century a group of photographers, so exceptional as to form a singular elite

Waugh identifies four primary aspects of homoerotic photography and film - the artistic, the commercial, the illicit, and the politico-scientific - tracing their development against a background of advances in visual technology. This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the visual imagery in addition to its production, circulation, and consumption.

In its voracious hunger to fill its decks and spars with the bodies of strong young sailors, nineteenth century maritime culture welcomed eccentrics, criminals, freaks and misfits. Sailors were to a large extent outcasts from society, but they were outcasts into a community of the marginalized, one that held very different values and expectations than the towns and villages from which the young men fled, a community that offered these men a tentative refuge. The United States Navy and the commercial maritime industry during the Age of Sail unwittingly created an environment where men who were attracted to other men -- later to be known as homosexual or gay -- could explore their sexuality at a distance from family and friends, with a freedom and openness they had never known on land. William Benemann is the author of A Year of Mud and Gold: San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849-1850; Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships; and Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade.

Italy as a haven of gay liberty: a grand tour with Oscar Wilde, featuring previously unseen photographs and archival materials In Oscar Wilde's Italian Dream 1875-1900, leading Wilde scholar Renato Miracco combines written research with previously unseen visual material ranging from Wilde's earliest heady trips to Italy as an Oxford student to recently released court documents from his trial and his final days in France and Italy in 1900, after his incarceration in Reading Gaol, and his voluntary exile from Britain. Italy, and the larger world beyond London, was essential to the sensitivity and awareness of Wilde's identity, his contributions to prison reform and his challenges to social norms and sexual stereotypes in his last years. It also offered a great deal of sexual liberty compared to the oppressive moral atmosphere of England at that time. The previously unseen images Miracco has incorporated in this volume (including photos that Wilde received from the gay German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden) are mainly from private collections, and together with letters, reminiscences and magazine and newspaper articles (along with derogatory articles about Wilde from the Italian press) they play a key role in placing Wilde's character, and an entire generation, in a complex context. Oscar Wilde's Italian Dream 1875-1900is a major addition to the canon of one of the world's greatest literary figures. Renato Miracco(born 1953) is an Italian art critic and curator. He was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for Cultural Achievements in 2018. He served as Cultural Attaché for the Italian Embassy in Washington from 2010 to 2018 and as advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy. Miracco has curated major exhibitions for Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and London's Estorick Collection. His passion for Wilde dates from the early 1980s when he wrote his first essay on Wilde's time in Italy. This new book on Wilde is based on new materials that Miracco has found over the last few years.

The best-selling photo book with the hottest Bel Ami boys by star photographer Joan Crisol now as softcover edition. The stars of the European adult entertainment studio Bel Ami usually look a little more like Love Me Tender than Rebel Yell. ¬The new softcover edition of the photo book by Spanish celebrity photographer Joan Crisol is proof that they can switch modes at any time. He portrays the handsome boys in bold poses and puts the spotlight on their wild side. ¬The resulting works are extremely hot and absolutely convincing. With aplomb and appeal, these ever-so-sweet guys show that they have plenty of raw and rampant energy in them after all.

There is a time and place for everything. Tony Patrioli's time were the 60s to 80s of the 20th century and his place was Italy. During his carreer as a photographer, he captured something long lost in todays society: young men from the Mediterranean sea, mostly heterosexual, who were comfortable in their bodies and willing to show the world - even in poses that can be seen as arousing and homoerotic. Tony Patrioli cultivated nude art, obviously inspired by the photography of Wilhelm von Gloeden, a 19th century German photographer who is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys. Asked why Gloeden had such an impact on him, Patrioli answers: "Because Gloeden was the only male nude photographer that was not banned in Italy at the time and because his imagination in part coincided with mine. The American bodybuilders photos seemed to me too far away from the world and from the guys I saw around me." This book features iconicbacl and white photographs from Patrioli's oeuvre as well as some little known treasures.

While nude women are a staple of commercial and art photography, the photographed male nude is often the target of censorship but seldom the subject of serious critical discussion. This is the first study to examine the unique interrelation between social perceptions of the nude and the medium of photography. Melody Davis focuses on the work of six artists whose photography confronts societal prohibitions. In order to understand the taboo and silence which surrounds this subject, she addresses the many social and cultural fears that inhibit the presentation and discussion of photographed male nudity. Because she deals with distinctions between the nude and the naked, the interrelational and the pornographic, the book has close connections with current debates about the impact of images and the limits of public tolerance of images of "deviance." Through the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucas Samaras, John Coplans, George Dureau, Joel-Peter Witkin, and a film by Dusan Makavejev, the author examines how the action ideal for the male body is challenged by an artistic medium in which man becomes the spectacle, not the spectator. By presenting three of photography's genres—self-portraiture, portraits of others, and allegorical nudes—Davis is able to reveal the critical and theoretical issues which shape our understanding of photographed nudity, and, by extension, representations of gender. Author note:Melody D. Davisis an independent writer and photographer who has taught in the Fine Arts Departments of Montclair State College and State University of New York at Stony Brook.