Masculine Beauty, photos by David Vance (Bruno Gmuender)
My favorite composition in Masculine Beauty presents a very handsome, clean-cut, almost hairless young man standing tippy-toes on a simple black pedestal, as if he were a classic marble statue on display in some museum or art gallery.
Statue boy has excellent musculature, wearing nothing more than a rough-hewn, pale loin cloth �" although "wearing" that flimsy piece of material is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. It seems to float across his private parts, perhaps blown onto his crotch by an unseen electric fan (as opposed to a human fan). I like the way his long, well-formed arms are outstretched from his sides, the way we can appreciate the muscles in his hands and fingers. His full-frontal pose lets us admire almost every inch of his choice physique.
This is the art of photography at its best. Within a split-second this pose was gone. We know he couldn't maintain that stance on his tippy-toes for long. We know that the piece of cloth, no matter how little it weighed, would be pulled by gravity down to the floor, leaving the emperor with no clothes at all.
Unfortunately, no other picture in Masculine Beauty approaches this magnificent revelation. "Masculine beauty" is not the first thought that sprang to mind as I leafed through the book. The men pictured look more like gay male circus performers, like acrobats you might see in a performance of Cirque du Soleil.
This is especially true of a pair of naked dudes in tight embrace, facing each other kissing, while suspended high above the unseen circus or gymnasium floor below. A similar picture depicts a solo dude holding onto an overhead iron pipe, exposed household plumbing. Masculine Beauty is technically masculine, if by masculine you mean the models are indeed males. But they aren't particularly exemplars of masculinity, not he-men.
Another picture I call, "Honey, I have a sick headache!" A blond guy has both hands on his head as if he's suffering from a migraine. Only his hands are out of focus, creating the illusion of motion.
Masculine Beauty is definitely G-rated. Maybe back in the 1950s it was a turn-on to see a guy in his white briefs, undershirt and tube socks, but not today. At least not for me.