Give a Guy a Camera, and He'll Take a Picture of Another Guy

Since the early days of photography, guys have been taking pictures of naked other guys. As early as 1872 Eadweard Muybridge began scientific studies that revealed the first male nude photographs unrelated to the typical artistic appreciation of the female nude.

Little attention was paid nude male photography until Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins started taking pictures of male nudes for guidance in his painting. He lost his teaching position when he insisted that art students draw male models without their posing straps. The scandal brought a lot of attention to male nude photography, and then everyone got into the action...thank heavens!





For more information on the past 100 years of male nude photography, check out David Leddick's "The Male Nude: Traces its Evolution in the Photography of the 20th Century."

Gay Art: Raphael Perez

Raphael Perez depicts intimate relationships between two people. Whether of two men or two women, or even mixed sex couples, his ability to paint "connections" between couples emerges with stark simplicity. Contrasts between dark and light, reflect the Yin Yang of relationships, and his use of red symbolizing masculinity, passion and dominance.

Raphael Perez, was born in 1965 and was raised in Jerusalem. He currently resides and works in Tel-Aviv. His works have been exhibited in several art galleries and GLBT community centers throughout Israel.



For more information on Perez and his work, Click Here!

Overpopulation + World Degradation = Don't Blame the Gays

Okay, I’m watching NBC’s Today Show this morning, and a straight couple with seventeen biological children are being highlighted. Of course the treatment of the story is cute and smarmy, containing humorous little platitudes, but as a gay man who is constantly hearing arguments against gay marriage, or even the very logic behind same-sex relationships because we cannot “bare children,” the idea of a straight family with seventeen kids really irks me.

As a parent of four (two mine, two my partner’s), I want to leave this earth as I found it—though, even then it was on the decline. Therefore, I believe we shouldn't over-burden a planet that’s already stressed to the max by overly contributing to a population explosion. According to The Population Institute, an international, educational nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce rapid population growth:

“Climate change is perhaps the most crucial environmental challenge of this century. Eleven of the world’s 12 highest annual global temperatures on record have occurred since 1995, leading many of the world’s top scientists and environmentalists to conclude that global warming has begun in earnest.

While a great deal of attention has been paid to reducing emissions responsible for global warming, there has been far less focus on the role of population growth in climate change.

Population pressures are not the sole cause of global warming, but exacerbate ecological degradation. Providing effective voluntary family planning to the tens of millions of women worldwide who lack access to affordable reproductive health services would be a significant step towards reducing human impact on areas left vulnerable by climate change.”

The parents of these seventeen kids say they’re very religious, and that their children are all gifts from God. I believe this is a crappy diversion of their culpability in contributing to an over-populated world, and the environmental degradation of the planet. Naturally, if these kids had been adopted, this post might have lauded this couple, but that is not the case.

So, the next time you hear a gay-hater using the argument that being gay is wrong because gay relationships can’t produce children, tell them they’re full of crap, and that the overpopulation of the world is one of the prime reasons this planet is ailing. Also, dig a little deeper, and add that because a lot of gay couples who want children adopt, we not only don’t add to an ever-expanding population, but contribute to a reduction of the surplus population caused by gay-hating straights like themselves.

Work Bitch! Jonny McGovern's Hot, New Video

Jonny McGovern, AKA the Gay Pimp, recently released a new piece/video "Something for the Fellows." As always, McGovern's music is racy, hot, and sexually charged. Better yet, the hot young guys he features in his video and what they do with Jonny and each other are even hotter. Sexy, sexy, sexy. The words, "work bitch" wonderfully laced throughout. Enjoy!

Tonight: Gay Animation - Rick and Steve

Rick and Steve are allegedly the "happiest gay couple in the world," which to premise an animated show is hysterical from the get-go. The American gay channel Logo's new show, aptly titled "Rick and Steve," debuts tonight (10pm EST), and is a must-see.

With twinks and daddies, lesbians and gays, the show looks to be off to a good start. Look for Rick and Steve's discussion about doing a three-some, and who they'd want to be the third (and it ain't Brad Pitt). Laugh as their conversations about their cat "Pussy" include loads of double entendres.

Puppets with sassy, gay dialogue is fun, but add the list of actors doing the voices, and it's even more fun. From Peter Paige (Queer as Folk), to Margaret Cho (herself), to Wilson Cruz (My So-Called Life), to Alan Cummings (himself), the cast is strong, funny, and very gay! For a preview, click the arrow below. Enjoy!

Gay Cowboys and Washington D.C.

Rugged, butch, and riding, gay cowboys have gotten a lot of attention since Brokeback Mountain was introduced in movie theaters two years ago.

Though there are gay rodeos annually throughout the United States and Canada, and all under the auspices of the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA), one in particular takes place right in Washington D.C.

The Atlantic States Gay Rodeo Association's (ASGRA) annual Atlantic Stampede, held this year September 7-9, is sure to entice those with even the most modest interest in cowboys, country western music, or just plain having fun, and "fun" is the active verb.

"First, you do not have to be a cowboy to come to the rodeo," says Patrick Hunter, ASGRA's PR Chairman, "because although the participants might be gay cowboys and cowgirls, most of the people in the stands are there to take in the excitement." People come from as far north as up-state New York, and as far south as Atlanta, Georgia to ASGRA's rodeo, and participants come from even farther. Events include your regular rough-and-tumble bull riding, calf roping, and barrel racing, but there are also "camp" events, like Goat Dressing, were two teams race to put a pair of undies on, you got it, a goat.

Hunter says that even though the rodeo is the center event, running on Saturday and Sunday, the parties and "saloons" that take place during the weekend's nights are tons of fun, with two-step dancing, camp-performers, Rodeo Royalty, and hundreds of boot-wearing, tight-denim baring broncos, all out to have a great time.

Hunter tells us, "the night events are a lot of fun, and people within the D.C. area, even though they may not make it to the rodeo itself, come to these parties." These events include Friday night's Stampede Saloon, and Saturday's not-to-be-missed Harvest Moon Ball.

You gay parents, uncles, and aunts might want to introduce your kids to rodeo at ASGRA's Stampede, because the event is not only "Family" friendly, it's family friendly, including a number of newly added children's rodeo events; the Stick Horse Race, where kids race around the arena on stick horses and the Piggy Back Flag Race, where an adult piggy backs a kid; retrieves a flag from a bucket and tries to place the flag in another bucket accross the arena in the best time. Winners in each event will receive $25.

"This year, we want to get some of those folks who bring their youngins not only watching the rodeo but also involved as well." Hunter says. "Both these events are a fun safe way to give them the opportunity to really be part of the rodeo excitement inside the arena."

The rodeo's host hotel is the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, and ASGRA has worked a discount room rate for those rodeo-goers who want to take in the full weekend. For more information on the Stampede gay rodeo, Click Here!

Photos copyrighted by and courtesy of
Adam Kirkpatrick.

A Literary Coming Out

If you are gay, and have not read any of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books, you are missing a big part of being gay. To be at a cocktail party, and not be able to say you've read Maupin is admitting that you're a troglodytic heathen, with no sophistication or intellectualism. Start by reading Tales of the City with its adventures of main character, hottie Michael (Mouse) Tolliver, but don't miss the others, because they are full of beautiful gayness...and no, watching the episodes on Logo don't count; reading Maupin's words colors things that celluloid cannot.

To give you a taste, when the closeted-to-his-parents Michael learns that his folks in Florida are supporting Anita Bryant's anti-gay "Save Our Children" crusade, he finally comes out to them in a letter that is powerfully moving, greatly back-boned, and to this day generates more requests for reprint permission than anything Maupin has written. Read every word, and relish the righteous anger that guides Michael to come out to his parents:

Dear Mama,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write. Every time I try to write to you and Papa I realize I'm not saying the things that are in my heart. That would be O.K., if I loved you any less than I do, but you are still my parents and I am still your child.

I have friends who think I'm foolish to write this letter. I hope they're wrong. I hope their doubts are based on parents who loved and trusted them less than mine do. I hope especially that you'll see this as an act of love on my part, a sign of my continuing need to share my life with you.

I wouldn't have written, I guess, if you hadn't told me about your involvement in the Save Our Children campaign. That, more than anything, made it clear that my responsibility was to tell you the truth, that your own child is homosexual, and that I never needed saving from anything except the cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant.

I'm sorry, Mama. Not for what I am, but for how you must feel at this moment. I know what that feeling is, for I felt it for most of my life. Revulsion, shame, disbelief - rejection through fear of something I knew, even as a child, was as basic to my nature as the color of my eyes.

No, Mama, I wasn't "recruited." No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, "You're all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You're not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends - all kinds of friends - who don't give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it."

But no one ever said that to me, Mama. I had to find it out on my own, with the help of the city that has become my home. I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being.

These aren't radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it's all right for you to like me, too.

I know what you must be thinking now. You're asking yourself: What did we do wrong? How did we let this happen? Which one of us made him that way?

I can't answer that, Mama. In the long run, I guess I really don't care. All I know is this: If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it's the light and the joy of my life.

I know I can't tell you what it is to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not.

It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. It's not fearing your body, or the pleasures that God made for it. It's not judging your neighbor, except when he's crass or unkind.

Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. I like it.

There's not much else I can say, except that I'm the same Michael you've always known. You just know me better now. I have never consciously done anything to hurt you. I never will.

Please don't feel you have to answer this right away. It's enough for me to know that I no longer have to lie to the people who taught me to value the truth.

Mary Ann sends her love.

Everything is fine at 28 Barbary Lane.

Your loving son,
Michael

(Now, run out and by your first Maupin book, and enjoy!)

Gay Art: Colourist Jean-Marc Plassard

Jean-Marc Plassard was born in Saint Etienne en Bresse, a small village in central France, in March 1961. The youngest of three boys, he grew up in this region and from an early age showed a keen aptitude for art-related work.

Jean-Marc classifies himself as a colourist and describes his artistic motivations as 'Desire, Love & Sensuality '. Generally his paintings depict sensual pleasures of the male physique. A provocative and sensitive view of the male form. Specifically, they are an oeuvre in a modern, figurative style, using light, colour and contrast to create atmosphere and texture.






Jean-Marc's use of color and subject has an almost Warhol feel, that translates wonderfully to his canvas. For more information on the wonderful work of Plassard, check out his website by Clicking Here!
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Gay Art: Steve Walker - Just Guys

Artist Steve Walker's paintings are stirring, emotionally charged, and gentle. "As a homosexual I have been moved, educated, and inspired by works that deal with a heterosexual context," says Walker. "Why would I assume that a heterosexual would be incapable of appreciating work that speaks to common themes in life, as seen through my eyes as a gay man. If the heterosexual population is unable to do this, then the loss is theirs, not mine." It would be hard to imagine anyone, straight or gay, who wouldn't be moved by Walker's treatment of male couples.

If Walker were an abstract painter or a landscape artist, he says his sexual orientation wouldn't matter. But since his paintings are about gay life, his sexual orientation becomes more important than his cultural background, age, or nationality. Lucky for us!








For more of Steve Walker's wonderful imagery, check out his website by Clicking Here.

Gay Art: Johan Ekkel - Dutch Treat

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Art and Design in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, Johan Ekkel has worked as an illustrator for advertising agencies and book and magazine publishers for well over 20 years. After an early retirement, he went back to his true love, painting naked men.

Ekkel's almost painterly quality, mixed with a fantasised reality, yields images that are provoking and emotional.

For more information on Ekkel, his work, and the opportunity to purchase Ekkel's art, Click Here!

Gay Art: Michael Breyette

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