Part 2 ended with photographers practically recreating each other’s poses, and today we push that idea one step further into direct conversations between photography and painting.
In these pairings, photographers clearly seem to be referencing older artworks — Renaissance paintings, Symbolism, classical sculpture, Saint Sebastian imagery, and other well-known artistic tropes that have carried queer undertones for generations. In one case, it even feels possible the photograph may have influenced the painting instead of the other way around.
What fascinates me is how naturally vintage male photography slips into these older visual traditions. A photographer like Wilhelm von Gloeden borrowing from classical painting doesn’t feel strange at all because the whole physique world was already obsessed with mythology, sculpture, athletic beauty, and idealized youth.
And later photographers kept doing the same thing — sometimes subtly, sometimes almost shot-for-shot. Saint Sebastian alone may be one of the most recycled queer-coded images in Western art history.
The more I look at these connections, the less interested I become in questions of “originality.” Art has always evolved through imitation, apprenticeship, admiration, theft, influence, tribute, rivalry, and reinvention.
Vintage male photography is no exception. These artists weren’t creating in isolation — they were building a long chain together, one beautiful naked guy at a time.
This was such a fascinating original offering. Many never would think about how famous art has been duplicated in photography and that it has had such a long history of duplication. Another winner!! Naven1918
ReplyDeleteThanks, Naven! I appreciate your feedback 💕bns
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