2538 - Homosexuality - LGBTQ - Bruce of Los Angeles (that is: Bruce Bellas). Male nudes. Two silver gelatin prints. Vintages. Verso bears the "Bruce" signature stamp as well as numbered stamps. 1960s. Sheet dimensions: approx. 25 x 20.5 cm each.

Homosexuality - LGBTQ - Bruce of Los Angeles (that is: Bruce Bellas). Male nudes. Two silver gelatin prints. Vintages. Verso bears the "Bruce" signature stamp as well as numbered stamps. 1960s. Sheet dimensions: approx. 25 x 20.5 cm each. Beautiful photographs, likely of the same model—wearing only a light skirt and bearing a tattoo on his upper arm—by the American photographer Bruce Harry Bellas (1909–1974), best known as “Bruce of Los Angeles.” Bruce is not only considered a pioneer of nude photography—whose “Beefcake” photos influenced not only Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritts—but in the pre-Stonewall era, magazines such as *Physique*—or “beefcake”—magazines alone provided the opportunity to present photos of naked or scantily clad, muscular young men in athletic poses with impunity. As magazines focused on fitness, health, and bodybuilding, physique magazines were freely available for sale throughout the United States. Popular titles such as “Physique Pictorial” were thus able to provide a receptive readership with homoerotic images at a time when homosexuality was heavily stigmatized and persecuted. — Some are mounted on mat boards, with minimal curling and edges only slightly rubbed.