The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/ Delacroix to Mapplethorpe

Discussing artists ranging from Thomas Eakins to Robert Mapplethorpe in this lavishly illustrated survey, Ellenzweig maintains that until very recently male homoerotic photographs were presented in terms acceptable to a wide audience. A photography and art critic and administrator at New York University, he first examines the theatrical shots French photographer Eugene Durieu made with painter Eugene Delacroix in the 1850s--pictures that paved the way for the academic nude. Eakins's Philadelphia pastorals of the 1880s--photos of naked young men at play--were embraced as genre scenes. Prussian baron Wilhelm von Gloeden's images of unclad Sicilian youths in Mediterranean sunlight were taken as allusions to Greek classics. Brassai's steamy 1930s pictures of Paris's gay and lesbian subculture were viewed as sociological documents. Only in photography's recent history, asserts Ellenzweig, have works dealing with male nudity and male homosexual relations been stigmatized in psychiatric terms. Featured among the 127 mostly explicit duotone photographs are works by Minor White, Arthur Tress, Duane Michals and Peter Hujar. (Oct.)