George Hester Day

I've spent over a year, off and on, looking for some crisp versions of the 1970s male nudes of George Hester, 1923-2022.  So far, all I've found are grainy images, some of which look like quickie cell phone shots.  Perhaps that was his style, but I can't imagine there being no repository of his work other than book resellers on eBay and other online venues.  So today is George Hester day, and I'm posting the best of what I could find.  If any of you own any of his books, please comment.

 

Hazy

The hazy nature of this photo doesn't put me off,

but I do wonder if it was intentional.

 

Back

I find this backside view interesting.

 

Right at us

I'm not sure if this model is looking right at us or right through us.

 

Group

George Hester photographed a number of nude groups, 

some of mixed gender and some all male.

 

Lynes linfluence

I don't know if George Hester was familiar with the work of George Platt Lynes,

but if not, their aesthetic certainly overlapped at times.

 

Page

I can't tell if this was the original page layout from Mr. Hester's book'

or something the seller put together to promote it.

 

Nice

Nice derriere on this one.

 

Favorite

This one is a personal favorite.

 

Grainy, but well lighted

Our last George Hester image is another one on the grainy side.  I'm still wondering if that is some sort of artistic statement or if no one has bothered to put high resolution images of his work online.

 

George Hester Day

For someone whose work as appeared in After Dark and who has published several books of nude photos, it proved difficult for me to fing quality images of George Hester's work to post here.  The photo above is from After Dark and is among a small number of good digital copies I could find.

If anyone has any to share or any links that might help, please use the contact form at upper right to get in touch with me.  You will be lavishly thanked and credited.

 

Typical

As is typical with George Hester's work I've been able to fine on the internet,

this example isn't the greatest image quality and the model is not named.

 

Example of what's out there

I really hope someone has some good quality scans of George Hester's work to share, 

because this is an example of a lot of what's out there on the vintage book resale sites.

 

Crowd

This crowded photo is from George Hester's 1973 book, The Classic Nude.

 

Craig Dudley

Craig Dudley (1945-2023) was a successful stage actor in the New York theater scene who also posed semi-nude for George Hester.  The above photo is definitely attributed to Mr. Hester, while the one below is sometimes credited to him and sometimes not.  Mr. Dudley posed nude for some photographers, and I will try to put together a series of hs work.  Despite having appeared in a number of good plays, he is best remembered for the gay film "Sticks and Stones."

 

Cell phone cleanup

I really like this George Hester shot of a thoughtful looking model.  Disclosure:  It took a lot of work to clean this one up.  It was apparently a cell phone photo of a page from a book that was for sale on eBay.  I had to remove glare and some really odd patchy yellowing.

 

Orange tone

At first I thought the slight orange cast to this was the result of poor reproduction tech, but then two things happened.  First, I found some other, more professional scans of George Hester's photos of female subjects with the same effect.  Second, I remembered that these were done in the 1970s when Playgirl set a whole trend with such coloration.

 

After Dark II

Here is another George Hester photo from After Dark magazine in the 70s.

I don't have an ID for the model, alas.

 

Dancer?

The final image in our George Hester series reminds me of Roy Blakey's photos of dancers.

Again, if anyone has more of Mr. Hester's work, please contact me.