The photography critic’s book explores the zone between art and porn
Featuring 250 photographic prints from the collection of New York-based photography critic Vince Aletti (whose other claim to fame is that he was the first person to write about disco), this is a book that records (mainly young) men who were in ‘great shape’. The images date from the 1930s to the 1960s, for much of which time their claim to be advertising the health benefits of the exercised body was a cover for the obvious sexual titillation the images offered (homosexuality began to be decriminalised in the US from the early 1960s). Stating that he was on the lookout for how photographers pushed the boundaries of what taste and the law permitted, Aletti dates the origins of his own interest in sthenolagnia to the accidental discovery of photographs of a pair of naked youths ‘the Victor’ and ‘the Vanquished’ in a magazine when he was aged eight or nine (he’s now eighty); not long after that he started smuggling home copies of Adonis, Body Beautiful and Tomorrow’s Man in his school bag. He became interested in them as artworks and sociological artefacts much later in life. In one image (most could be mail-ordered as individual photographs too) included here, a naked man is carrying a television set through his living room; in another, a man, naked, obviously, and flexing his chest, is dropping the needle on a classical recording. There are couples and group shots, tattoos and tan lines. Bikers, mechanics, sailors and warriors, as well as plenty of others who seem to be reenacting, bound or otherwise, poses reminiscent of Michelangelo’s dying slave. The effect overall is of images that hover in a zone that lies somewhere between art and porn. And while this is presented as a book about queer aesthetics (and its blossoming during oppressive times), it’s also going to appeal to those in search of a modern Laocoön. That and those who believe in the survival of the fittest, from those more generous, pre-Schwarzenegger, pre-Photoshop days when ‘fittest’ still encompassed body types ranging from almost athletic to mildly ripped.
Physique by Vince Aletti. SPBH Editions, £50 (hardcover)
From the April 2025 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
