Bruce Weber and the Glamorous Male Body
Horny Hefty
Before the 1970s, erotic male imagery was very much a fringe area of
photography, part of a homosexual culture that was still very much an
underground ghetto. Rather than being openly homosexual, it centred on
ideals of body culture and body building.
Male nudes were a relatively infrequent subject in the first fifty
years of photography. Those that were made were largely intended as
studies for artists, though doubtless they were also sold - like the
more common female 'academic studies' - to a wider audience with baser
interests.
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931)
Baron von Gloeden was the first photographer to devote his life to the
photography of the male nude, making numerous studies of young boys in
Sicily from the time he came to live in a villa in Taormina in 1876.
Most of his work was produced between 1895 and 1910, and after his
death in 1931, large numbers of prints and negatives were destroyed by
the fascist authorities.
Until 1895, von Gloeden had received an allowance from his stepfather,
but this came to an abrupt end due to business failures and he had to
earn a living from selling his pictures. Although we think of these
times as prudish and repressed, von Gloeden had little problem both in
showing his pictures internationally and in selling them. His work
included landscapes, portraits and genre pictures as well as the
roughly 7000 pictures of youthful male nudes.
These were usually seen as either ethnographical studies or as
illustrations of Greek Literature (Sicilians claim Greek descent).
This was an age where a study of Ancient Greek and Greek culture -
with its strongly homoerotic nature was a part of the education of the
elite, and this made van Gloeden's work acceptable to a cultured
audience. The pictures - particularly the nudes - were bought by the
rich and famous around the world and many of the best-known society
figures of the age visited him at his villa.
Van Gloeden's work was written about and used to illustrate essays on
the male nude in serious artistic magazines such as the monthly
'Photogram' in the 1890s. As Gleeson White noted in one of his
features there, a major problem with male nudes is the tendency for
the subjects to fall into obvious and set poses. Little has changed in
the intervening more than a hundred years. van Gloeden's strength and
the charm of his work is that he usually managed to avoid these
stilted pictures, perhaps as a result of his habit of dressing only in
a leopard's skin and playing games with the young boys until they had
abandoned their inhibitions about being in the nude.
Van Gloeden had to leave Taormina for the duration of the First World
War and when he returned, the world had changed. His work seemed dated
and there was little demand for it.
German Nudes
Many male nude pictures, including some by von Gloeden, but more by
less distinguished photographers began to be published, particularly
in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century. Developments
in half-tone printing technology which enabled the popular illustrated
newspapers, also allowed for publications of a more specialised
nature. Many naturist and body-culture magazines appeared and the body
culture movements became an important part of German culture in the
1920s and 30s. These often had an emphasis on 'healthy outdoor
pursuits' and were sometimes linked with new youth movements including
the boy scouts. (Even such British publications as the 'Boy's Own
Paper' (1879-1967) discussed boys as photographic models in the
1900s.)
In the 1920s and early 1930s, many German photographers produced fine
studies of the male and female body both in action and in repose. Body
worship took on a more sinister form as a part of the Nazi movement,
with its ideas of racial purity and Aryan superiority. They banned the
nudist FKK (Free Body Movement), denounced decadent art - including
naturalistic nudes - and glorified an ideal 'German Man' whose
muscular nude body was that of a smooth hairless and polished
body-builder.
West Coast Physique - The Athletic Model Guild
No such political motives can be attributed to the male physique
movement which began on the American West Coast. The pioneer was Bob
Mizer (1922-92), who opened his Athletic Model Guild photographic
studio in Los Angeles in the home he shared with his mother in 1945.
Mizer wanted to share his view of the beauty of young men with a wider
public, and in 1947 was prosecuted for dissemination of obscene
material (not including any nudes) by the US Postal Service. Initially
found guilty, the case was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.
This was a landmark judgement which opened the doors for homo-erotic
photography to come out into the open. Mizer went on to publish the 89
issues of the magazine, 'Physique Pictorial', and to photograph over
10,000 nude males, "in various states of dress and undress; solo, in
pairs, and in groups; oiled and not; posing and wrestling". He was the
first photographer to make use of the strong homo-erotic attraction
between young men engaged in wrestling.
Bruce Bellas...Bruce of Los Angeles
Bruce Bellas (1909-74) was a schoolteacher in Nebraska before moving
to California after the Second World War. There he taught himself
photography and learn about 'physique photography' from Mizer. Bellas
was a skilled director of his models, and although his work often
seems repetitive, he made use of the kitsch, incorporating into his
work rather than being entirely dominated by it. The oiled bodies in
their often arch poses occasionally surprise us with a hint of
vulnerability and a suggestion that they and the photographer are
playing a game with us.
To describe Bellas as "Unquestionably the forbearer to the sexy
aesthetic of Bruce Weber and the razor sharp elegance of Robert
Mapplethorpe" (as the Photosique web site does) is to claim too much,
but there are certainly hints in his work of some of the things to
come. Bellas was certainly a master of 'Hollywood' style lighting.
Naked Scenes
Although Weber most certainly did not invent homoerotic photography,
he very forcefully put it into the world of mainstream publications
through his advertising and fashion work. Weber has what might seem to
some a problem for a fashion photographer - he doesn't seem very
interested in clothes. His solution to taking fashion pictures often
seems to more or less ignore them, to let them become peripheral to
the images he is making. A typical Weber fashion shoot sounds more
like a very expensive picnic, where his models are encouraged to play
around partly dressed while he photographs their antics. Particularly
if the clothes aren't very interesting - or there are not many to
photograph - then flesh can take their place. In recent years he has
sometimes taken along some of his dogs (perhaps the great love of his
life) to these events to hide the clothes as well.
It was the series of ads for Calvin Klein, beginning in the late
1970s, that Weber hit the magazines with his often near naked,
seemingly casual and highly eroticised images of men - and
occasionally women. We often feel voyeuristic - we have somehow
intruded on a private event and, courtesy of his pictures, are seeing
flashes of steamy relationships that would best be kept out of sight.
The power of his images - at least in part - comes from their apparent
transgression of normal decencies; if we had by accident stumbled
across this scene, we would have apologised and withdrawn.
A photo shoot - Abercrombie and Fitch
There is an interesting feature about an Abercrombie & Fitch photo
shoot on the Swarthmore campus in the online student newspaper. It
describes the team that arrived; "four caterers, two seamstresses,
four hair stylists, about two dozen Budget rental cars, roughly 30
models" and of course the photographer himself with several
assistants.
Most of Weber's fashion shoots are with models of student age, and
chosen for their good looks and physique. Beautiful young white
Americans - few of those used in the A&F sessions are established
models, though some go on to become them. Most are indeed still
students, and are often invited to model after being seen on beaches
and other locations where they are showing off their bodies. The
location was chosen to give an 'Ivy League' atmosphere, as the models
danced around to a Beatles song with the photographer, "a short,
stocky man in a black sweater, beret and pink scarf snaps photo after
photo."
Weber as Director
In an Observer feature, Tim Adams notes that Weber tells his models
"that if they touch somebody, he wants them to really feel it." Weber
is putting people together and setting a mood and then leaving them to
get on with it while he photographs them.
David Bailey, the great British fashion photographer who emerged from
London in the 1960s is a fan of Weber's photography, has often stated
that while Avedon stated that photography was not about sex, "I think
it's totally about sex." His work is about a relationship with the
person he is photographing, and in his Guardian feature on Weber,
Bailey goes on to explain that he loves people for giving him the time
and the opportunity to work with them and tries to do his best for
them. "If you don't have any connection with the subject, it is very,
very difficult to take photographs of them."
While Bailey's work was about the relationship between photographer
and photographed, Weber seems more to be in love with looking, a
voyeur rather than an actor in the event under his direction. Weber's
photography is not so much about his own sexuality in the same way
that Bailey's was, but about the pleasure in watching others. It's a
pleasure that he indulges with a charming innocence which is somehow
purely American, untainted by the cynicism that informs the British.
Images of Man
The eleven images on the 'Image of Man' web site by Weber are in part
straight out of the old issues of the nudist magazines and the male
physique press. A hunky male stands in a lake, water up to his thighs,
gazing into the distance, hands on head or dappling the water surface.
Two young men throw a third into the air in comradely frolics, water
splashing around them. A muscular figure leans back posing with a
paddle in front of a canoe. Several could be lost in a page of
pictures by 'Bruce of Los Angeles'. These images seem only to have any
interest if we read them in some way ironically, but I'm afraid we are
in an irony-free zone.
There are some that I find more successful. A lively group of four in
their undershorts, just coming up out of the lake onto a landing stage
and apparently running towards their piled clothes and the
photographer behind these, their bodies dripping water and outlined
against the white of lake and sky. One of the four even looks of
normal build (perhaps one of his assistants also took a dip!) There is
a life and spontaneity about this image quite absent from the posed
camp of the others.
Another memorable image shows three male models in a car, doors open,
naked from the waist up, the two in the front seat resting in the sun
after some energetic climax, the driver leaning back, his passenger
stretched out forward. The model in the back leans forward alertly,
cigarette in his hand, ready to go.
Calvin Klein - Vanity Fair
Weber's 1991 images for Calvin Klein, carried in an insert to Vanity
Fair, seem much less contrived and more openly sexual. Instead of
smouldering desire we get active grappling - and at least a hint of
violence - in some of these black and white images. Couples, sometimes
male and female, sometimes both male embrace, grabbing clothes and
bodies.
Perhaps the finest of the images shows two men flat on a bed, one in
dark singlet and jeans, the other in white, naked from the waist up.
Their heads meet roughly at right angles, and each stretches up their
outside arms above their heads with their hands under a pillow,
possibly meeting. The angle of their elbows and the lines of their
shoulders forms a rectangular frame enclosing their heads. Their other
arms lie together on the bed roughly from shoulder to elbow, touching.
One extends his hand to rest on his partner's knee, contrasting
clearly on his dark jeans; the other rests his hand on his own stomach
below the bottom of the singlet, pushing his fingers down inside the
front of his jeans. Their bodies are apart but joined, lying on the
bed together. It is both a clever and a moving image.
Female Portraits
Weber is also a fine portrait photographer, and some of my favourite
portraits by him are of women. There are two good examples in a
feature on jazz singer Diana Krall. In one he looks down on her,
sitting in a chair, dressed in black, one hand reflectively to chin as
she looks into the distance. The dark grey background helps to make
the glow of her skin, the deep 'V' of her dress to her cleavage and
the carefully lit hair stand out. It's a confident and dynamic image
of her. The second picture of her - in a similar black dress - is
taken from a low angle. She is sitting on the edge of a bed in front
of a row of bright windows. Her long bare legs (accentuated by the
high heels) are crossed around the ankles, and she leans forward,
resting her arms on her knees, crossing her hands at the wrists,
fingers outstretched toward the floor. Again she seems relaxed and in
thought.
Two portraits of Patti Smith, a 'Time Out - New York' 1998 cover and
inside page are also very different. The cover, a black and white
image, illustrates the quotation "I used to feel so badly some days
that I didn't even want to get up out of bed", with Smith sitting up
in a black nightdress, mostly covered by a white sheet. One arm
reaches down in front, the other folds back to rest on the opposite
shoulder, as she looks rather bleakly at the photographer, one eye
partly hidden by hair. It's an image that perfectly fits the cover,
her body jammed in by the logo and type.
The image from inside the magazine is plainer and more direct. In
colour, head and shoulders tight cropped, again hair hanging down over
her left eye, with the right staring directly and coolly at the camera
and the viewer.
Growing Up
Weber was born and grew up in the small mining and farming town town
of Greensburg, Pennsylvania. His father was a successful businessman
and a keen amateur photographer who spent a lot of his time
photographing his beautiful wife on the family lawn. Weber grew up as
a rather lonely child, looking at typical middle America as something
of an outsider, sharing few of the interests of his age group. He was
a rather shy and unpopular child, and retreated very much into his
fantasies. One basis for these was the fashion magazines - such as
Vogue - which his mother read.
In his interview with Tim Adams for the Observer, Weber talked about
himself around the age of 17. His mother would tell him to shower and
get changed for dinner at the country club where he went to swim, but
he couldn't face it. The locker room would be too crowded, so he just
washed at a sink in his underwear. (He tells a slightly different
version of this story in his partly autobiographical film, 'Chop
Suey', where he recalls waiting for all the other boys to leave before
jumping into the shower.) These stories gives an insight into his
attitudes as a young man and also his photography; as he commented
himself: "We sometimes photograph the things we can never be."
New York
Sometime around 1966, Weber went to New York to study film and
photography at New York University. (One story told is that in 1969
his parents refused to let him join the 400,000 or so at the Woodstock
Festival & Concert. When they saw the crowds on TV, his parents said
to him "Aren't you glad we didn't let you go along with all those
people?" Weber apparently went up to his bedroom, shut himself up on
his own and decided to become a photographer. However, as Woodstock
was several years after he had already gone to New York and started
his studies there, this seems unlikely.)
When he went to New York, Weber was already spending much of his time
photographing men, including blues singers such as John Lee Hooker. In
Greenwich Village he went into a café and saw Diane Arbus. He already
knew her work well, and went up and introduced himself as a
photography student and told her he liked her work. Later he showed
her his work and she got him a place on Lisette Model's course at the
'New School For Social Research'.
Like many students, Weber was short of cash, and he started to model
for photographers, among the probably the best of the New York fashion
photographers of the time, Richard Avedon.
Partnership
Weber's first group show came in 1973, and he had his first one-person
show the following year. He was still finding getting work very
difficult - people generally wanted pictures of girls rather than the
men he was photographing.
One major break was finding an agent. It was even more important for
his life, because she was so friendly and supportive and he fell in
love with her. Nan Bush has shared his live for over 30 years, and
they work on everything together. She previously represented
photographers including Horst and William Connors, and has worked with
Weber since 1974.
Before long, Weber was a success, shooting for Vogue. His shots stood
out from other fashion work at the time. Where other pictures were
obviously staged and set up, his models seemed to be themselves. His
images still stand out, although there are now many who imitate him.
Sexuality
Weber has always refused to encapsulate his personality into a simple
and restricted concept of sexuality. In his interview with Tim Adams
he made it clear that we confuse sexuality with character. Although on
various published lists of gay celebrities, he doesn't put himself in
any category. For him, sex is something we do, rather than anything
that defines us. He likes to feel he is able to fall in love with
anyone regardless of gender.
Many people have strong and long-term relationships with people of
both sexes and sometimes irrespective of their declared sexual
orientation, often without any physical element. Some have equally
strong relationships with animals. Weber certainly feels a strong bond
with his dogs, taking them everywhere and often including them in his
photographs and films. Relationships are more about emotional bonds
than any particular physical aspects. We live in an age that obsesses
about the physical side of relationships, while in life this is often
either absent or of little import. Relationships really are more about
minds than genitals.
Weber has expressed his surprise and disappointment when the media
find his work - or aspects of his life - controversial, devoting pages
of newspapers to them. He feels that there are rather more important
things that should be at the forefront of the news - such as wars. It
is hard to disagree.
Chet Baker
Bruce Weber is also well known as a film maker. He made his reputation
with a film about the life of Chet Baker (1929-88), the legendary jazz
trumpet player (and singer) who died jumping or falling out of a
window in Amsterdam in 1988. An early recording with Gerry Mulligan
had brought Baker international recognition as one of the leading
'cool' west coast jazz players, though he could also mix with the
hardest of 'beboppers.'
Baker got mixed up with drugs early, and stayed that way, spending six
months in an Italian prison, and loosing his teeth in a fight with
other junkies in San Francisco in 1968. Two years later he was back
playing - and still on drugs, touring mainly in Europe until his
death. Although still highly regarded as a jazz player in Europe, he
was largely forgotten or unfairly dismissed simply as a sad example of
a man ruined by addiction.
Shortly before he died, he collaborated with Weber in a curious kind
of pseudo-documentary film, 'Let's Get Lost' (1988), sometimes
regarded as a fascinating study of self-destruction and hero worship.
It got Weber nominated for an Oscar. The Baker family and many of
Baker's fans - particularly those who had known him in recent years -
were not amused by it. Baker himself was obviously upset by some of
Weber's questions and Weber's continual harking back to the beautiful
young man he had once been. He was 57, ravaged by years of drug and
alcohol abuse, but still capable of playing exquisite music. Baker
unfortunately killed himself before the editing was complete.
The film is really more a story of Weber's own homoerotic obsession
with a young Chet Baker rather than a true documentary, although the
story is in there, seen with what has been described as a "complex and
obsessive voyeurism." Shot with some superb visuals and framing, it is
this powerful vision of Weber's that make the film an absorbing
experience even if perhaps disappointing as a view of Baker.
Unfortunately it no longer appears to be available, although it would
make a fine release on DVD, together with some more of Baker's music
and perhaps some of Weber's short films.
The film revived interest in America in Chet Baker's work,
particularly because of the extra publicity around his death, helped
by suspicions of foul play. However, the Dutch police investigated
thoroughly and confirmed no one else was involved. Baker had taken
huge amounts of heroin, even for a seasoned addict, and had either
decided he wanted to die or perhaps had just not known what he was
doing, perhaps falling asleep and falling out of the window. The film
became an instant classic (perhaps repaying the million or so dollars
Weber had invested in it, being unable to find a backer.) Baker's
records began to sell again in the USA and he became even more famous
after the film and his death than in his days with Mulligan.
Broken Noses etc
Weber's first film had also had a Chet Baker association, using music
from Baker and Gerry Mulligan on the sound track. 'Broken Noses'
(1987) was a documentary about former boxing champion Andy Minsker who
ran a boxing club for boys in Portland Oregon. Weber has also made a
number of short films - 'The Beauty Brothers, Parts I-IV' (1987),
'Backyard Movie' (1991), 'Gentle Giants' (1994) and 'The Teddy Boys Of
The Edwardian Draper Society' (1995), as well as music videos for
Chris Isaak and the Pet Shop Boys. Chop Suey
Chop Suey is a Chinese dish invented in America, taking its name from
the Cantonese for the 'odds and ends' that were thrown into the pot to
make it. It is an appropriate title for Weber's latest film, which is
also composed of a number of odds and ends thrown in to produce a kind
of autobiographical account, in which Weber's alter ego is the young
Peter Johnson. (A star both of whose names are slang terms for the
penis is perhaps rubbing it in too much.)
Weber discovered Johnson while photographing young men training on the
college wrestling team at Iowa University. Johnson was 17, and for the
next four years joined Weber in his travels around the world being
photographed and filmed. Weber's adoration of Johnson has a homoerotic
aspect, but is perhaps more akin to the grooming and bringing out of a
debutante, and by the end of the film we are expected to view them as
father and son.
Theirs is a complex relationship. Weber envies Johnson for his youth
and his masculinity. He loves him but it is a love that would be
ruined by any physical consummation. As David Bailey states in his
perceptive review, it is very much a film based around Weber's
yearning. Johnson's feelings are less scrutable, as he plays his role
with a grunting inarticulacy, but it certainly paid dividends. By the
end of his apprenticeship, Johnson was a highly paid "homoerotic
icon", a male model working for Ralph Lauren, Versace and Karl
Lagerfeld.
Also in the film - and for many its more interesting aspects - are a
number of Weber's other obsessions, including Robert Mitchum, Frances
Faye, Sir Wilfred Thesiger and Diana Vreeland, appearing either
through clips of earlier material or, for those still with us,
interviews in which Johnson is encouraged with little success to try
to take an intelligent part.
Vreeland(1906-1989) is of most direct interest to photographers, for
over half a century the doyenne of American fashion - 25 years at
Harpers Bazaar, then Bazaar, then Editor in Chief of Vogue from 1962
to 1971, before moving to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY as
Special Consultant to the Costume Institute. David Bailey who worked
with her describes her as "my best mate in the 1960s and 70s. Tough
and funny." Her short extempore performance on film is one of the
highlights, and if only it was longer.
Jazz and cabaret singer Frances Faye (1912-1991) was openly gay before
it was either politic or safe - let alone fashionable. It was a stance
that led to her being written out of much show business history. The
scenes used by Weber came from her appearances on the Ed Sullivan
Show, which are not recorded in its written history. Faye was a great
singer, recording with many of the best bands of the time as a jazz
singer before turning more to cabaret. Another of her claims to fame
is that she taught her better known cousin, Danny Kaye, to sing.
Robert Mitchum (1917-1997), the 'Bad Boy' of the Movies was another
Weber hero, perhaps because he was so many things Weber was not. Among
his many quotable sayings was "There are all kinds of rumors about me.
and they're all true, every one of them. You can make some up if you
want", and perhaps Weber has taken him at his word. I'm not sure what
his singing with Dr John adds to the film, and the same could be said
of some of the other and even more obscure clips. A certain character
perhaps, like a pinch of some special herb, or perhaps it is Weber
saying 'I'm really an interesting guy.'
In keeping with the title, this film is a fascinating rag-bag, with
some possibly unintentionally hilarious scenes - including one with
Johnson and an elephant. Personally I've never been much aroused by
pachyderms.
Weber also sets himself up for ridicule in some of the voice-overs
with which he links the whole film together, and in particular in the
scene where he looks through some of the prints in his photographic
collection, including prints by Edward Weston. The film company calls
it "an educational moment with Weber's own wonderful collection of
classic photography."
At one point Weber compares his own collaboration with Johnson with
that of Alfred Stieglitz and his second wife Georgia O'Keefe. Michael
Adams, writing in 'Gay Wired' notes: "Whatever his achievements, Bruce
Weber is no Alfred Stieglitz and I do not believe there is a parallel
universe in which Peter Johnson is even remotely related to Georgia
O'Keefe." Amen to that.
My problem with the work of Bruce Weber is perhaps simply because I
don't share his attitude to people. I may find people - including some
of those he has photographed - fascinating, but I'm more interested in
talking to them, in finding out how they think and feel - rather than
simply employing them to create a little frisson.
Like David Bailey, I admire his ability to put his own stamp on his
pictures, to "take a picture of a white background and include his
personality in it." Weber's work seems to me to be ultimately about
style rather than substance; he is certainly one of the finest
stylists around at the moment, but hasn't managed to say anything of
interest or depth so far as I can see.
Unlike Weber, I don't much care for a vision of perfect young manhood
-the least visually interesting age of the less visually interesting
sex so far as I am concerned. His work has been very successful at
selling clothes and boosting the profits of designer brands, but it
doesn't in the end tell me anything beyond the superficial.
Weber is obviously a very successful photographer, and also a very
influential one, as a quick glance at any of the style magazines will
show. His work has 'inspired' more vapid imitators than anyone else
over the last ten years. We see it (direct or in imitation) on the
billboards, in print and TV advertising and increasingly in the actual
programmes.
The fashion industry has always been a great user of photography,
taking ideas and spinning them to its own ends. Many fine
photographers have worked in it - including quite a few I've written
about. I can't think of one whose fashion work has actually been what
made them great. For some, fashion was a great experience, but it was
the work they did away from fashion that made them great
photographers; fashion was (and is) a way to make a living.
