Reed Massengill Knihy

The nude self-portrait is perhaps the most intimate form of photography. It delves deep into taboo territory and strips away the traditional barriers between artist and viewer. Witnessing such a private act, we may feel the queasy embarrassment of a voyeur, but we are always compelled to look further. The images cut to the core of issues of identity, sexuality, and ego–and as they reveal an essential truth about their creators they also tell us something about ourselves.Self-Exposure features more than 100 works from both established masters and up-and-coming photographers–many never before published. This groundbreaking collection traces the development of the male self-portrait from its earliest beginnings with such greats as Hippolyte Bayard, Herbert Tobias, and André Kertész, to the contemporary efforts of such artists as John Dugdale, Anthony Goicolea, and Yasumasa Morimura. Each artist takes a uniquely individual approach ranging from the shockingly perverse and aggressively erotic to the elusively self-conscious and sublimely beautiful. Complete with brief biographies of each artist, Self-Exposure is a powerful survey of this most seductive subject.

Reed Massengill's men are young men. Without hesitations Massengill gets close to them with his camera. His extroverted men present themselves cheeky and playful, teasing us pleassurably with their beauty.

Long before Bruce Weber or Herb Ritts picked up a camera, there was a photographer whose images glorified the male nude. But Alonzo Hanagan, better known as Lon of New York, was working during the 1940s and 1950s, when images of the male nude were not just illicit but illegal. Twice, his studio was raided and his negatives destroyed by police. Many of the images in this book thus exist only as prints purchased by collectors at the time.Now, for the first time in more than forty years, these photos are published in one comprehensive collection that recovers this lost body of work. Suffused with a coy playfulness and a naïve vulnerability, these erotic images of men evoke a time of greater innocence but also of greater suppression, revealing much about gay history and the history of photography.

Massengill's work combines the very best qualities of classic male nude photography with a keen and often sublime artistic insight. Rarely have photographic studies of the male nude united these two characteristics so effectively.With an extraordinary sense of style, sensuality, and understanding of the unique grace and powerful physical beauty of the male figure, this impressive collection introduces to the world a major new artist.

Die Geschichte der männlichen Aktfotografie kann nicht geschrieben werden ohne die wichtigen Beiträge Roy Blakeys anzuerkennen. Seine 1972 erschienene Monografie mit männlichen Akten, HE, war eine Offenbarung. Diese atemberaubende neue Sammlung - liebevoll editiert und wunderschön produziert - stellt das bedeutende Werk aus und trägt dazu bei, Klarheit zu schaffen.