In Public

There’s something thrilling about being naked where you’re not supposed to be. Porn and erotic stories have always played with it—the park, dance floor, pool, restaurant, alley. Usually it’s fantasy or carefully staged. Actually doing it brings judgment, indecent-exposure laws and consequences considerably less sexy than the fantasy.

1. Unknown male stripper in 1970. The audience are women here, but it's a great photo.

2. Unknown model and photographer.  The file is titled "Seedy Times [Square] strip club for guys [in the] 1970's" from an online article on the subject, which referred to male strippers as "peelers" for slowly peeling off their clothes.

3. Jeremy Scott aka Troy Andrew Myers performing in the nude in the late 70s to early 80s. 

 

Sometimes, of course, being seen is the whole point. The stripper turns nudity into performance. So does the male model standing naked before a room of fully clothed figure-drawing students. Everyone has permission to look. Change the room, though, and suddenly the same naked body becomes a problem.

4. Brian Reynolds by Pat Rocco in L.A. in 1969 on the 101 freeway near the exits to Western Ave, Melrose Ave, and Normandie Ave.

5. Same shoot as #4 above facing the camera.

6. Also the same shoot as #4 and #5 above. This looks so dangerous.  There isn't a real median or much space between the lanes and I am sure this was distracting to the drivers.

 

Brian Reynolds takes that idea straight into traffic. Naked in the middle of a freeway, the body becomes gleefully defiant: Here I am. You can see me. Deal with it. Public nudity can be erotic, funny, reckless—and a rebellion against the rules we’ve created around our bodies.

7. British bodybuilder, Steve Kotis, on an educational tour to a British boys school to promote health and fitness in 1965 after winning "Most Muscular" at a Mr. Teen America competition back-to-back in 1963 and 1964. I love the expression on the face of the kid in glasses behind him who is clearly awed by Kotis' ass.

8. An unidentified wrestler getting weighed in at the 1948 London Summer Olympic Games, or Austerity Games, at the Empress Hall  in Earl's Court, London.

9. Jacques Pannier by Studio Arax in Paris' esplanade of the Trocadero in 1950.

 

But nudity around other people isn’t necessarily exhibitionism at all. Locker rooms, live figure studies, nude beaches, naturist communities and historically communal male swimming all create spaces where nakedness can simply be normal. The 1948 Olympic weigh-in makes the point beautifully: one naked man surrounded by clothed men weighing, watching and taking notes—and nobody seems to find the situation remarkable. The body hasn’t changed; the context has.

10. Men sunbathing and kissing on the Chelsea Piers or Pier 46 in Manhattan which gay men of the time referred to as "utopia" c. 1976. Notice the mural by Tava aka Gustov van Will who was a precursor to Keith Haring.

Gay men have also claimed spaces where different rules seemed possible—beaches, piers, parks, trails and cruising grounds. Stanley Stellar brilliantly documented that world around New York’s piers. Alex Espinoza explores its larger history in Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, which I highly recommend.

11. Soldiers on the beach by Michael Stokes c. early 1940s from the book he created with co-author, Dian Hanson, titled My Buddy: World War II Laid Bare (published by Taschen in 2014 & 2018). Apparently, soldiers were encouraged to form intense bonds with a "buddy" from their military unit. This kind of horseplay was totally normal between "buddies."

 

Maybe that’s what makes these images so compelling. Who decided where the naked male body is acceptable—and where it suddenly becomes obscene? Put the penis in the “wrong” place and simply being out in public can become a crime.

Please share any thoughts, questions, additions or corrections in the comments. Thank you, bns