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Friday, July 3, 2020


I've always wondered if this photo was the opening piece of a porn sequence 
or just a picture of two men who were really close.

4 comments:

  1. During my own extensive research into the history of sportswear, I came across countless photographs from the late Victorian, early 20th century in this genre. Photography was seemingly the last refuge for the Victorian culture that arose from the Classical revival of the time but became eclipsed by the Evangelical revival, a phenomenon largely of the English-speaking world. Within decades, photography was censored and what had been regarded as acceptable male behaviour, even in public, had - largely in England as a result of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which outlawed and criminalized all homosexual acts - had changed society. Formerly, the Platonic ideal governed male behaviour, men outside the extended family often kissed on greeting and as one small example, it had been in my public school a "privilege" for boys in the senior school to walk arm-in-arm. (Photographs of WWI soldiers were still inspired by this ideal.) Oddly perhaps to us who have forgotten how Victorian men regularly took their clothes off in all-male company, my penny's worth - and an opinion is worth no more than any other - is that this far from pornographic and possibly from a series of art photographs extolling the beauty of the male body in tandem with an expression of the Platonic ideal - what we now rather coyly call the "bromance".

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  2. This is beautiful on many levels. I wonder what/who the man on the left is looking at, and what he is thinking...he seems so far off.

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    1. Considering the era, I would venture that the photographer set it up that way. For what reason, my usually vivid imagination fails me.

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