Bryan
BURNS Picturing Greek Love: the
Photographic Tradition of the Classical Male Body
Over
the course of the 19th century the male body came to the
fore as the object of a newly formulated sexual desire
and as the object of a new visual medium. The early
intersection of homosexuality and photography developed,
in part, through a safe haven provided by the Classical
past. Just as the precedent of "Greek love" provided a
model for the sexual desires of such authors as Oscar
Wilde and John Addington Symonds, so too did the imagery
of ancient Greece serve photographers exploring new
ground through images of the male body.
Subject
matter was critical to early photography, whose status as
"art" was not yet established. In a medium perceived as
directly representing its subject, the "truthful"
likeness of a naked figure was troublesome indeed.
Allusions to antiquity served to legitimize the male nude
as part of the artistic tradition, distinct from the
erotic or pornographic. Turn-of-the-century images, such
as those by Wilhelm von Gloeden and Frederick Holland
Day, thus borrowed a drapery of respectability from the
imagery of antiquity. These images, however, with their
desirous visions of ephebic male bodies were little
tempered by the classicizing sandals, lyres, wreaths, or
location. Rather, these visual references contributed to
the developing ideals of a homosexual past and present,
and established a tradition of homoerotic photography.
Covert eroticism flourished in the widely circulating
images of the physical culture movement, where
classicizing tropes framed the sculpted body of the
modern athlete. A turning point came, however, during the
prime-era of the muscle magazine with a handful of
mid-20th century photographers who engaged more
provocatively with ancient and modern bodies.
This
paper examines the development of the Classical body
within the history of photography, concentrating on a
shift from identification to distance demonstrated
through a selection of images produced between 1935 and
1955. George Hoynigen-Huene, Herbert List, and George
Platt Lynes repositioned the photographic tradition of
the male nude by variously combining elements of
ethnography, portraiture, fashion photography, and
surrealist art. Setting flesh against stone, these images
challenge the earlier tradition, and represent the
Classical body as a remnant of antiquity. Rather than
recreating images of ancient Greek love, these
photographers explored the objectified male body in
contrast to the idealized recreations of the past. While
demonstrating the ability to make marble appear as living
flesh, and vice versa, List emphasized incongruities
between Classical sculptures and live models.
Hoynigen-Huene echoed List's Hellenic focus, but created
a decidedly modern setting that emphasizes the separation
from antiquity. Lynes introduced an illusionist
perspective, through which Classical bodies were depicted
as an elusive ideal, lost from the dimension of more real
bodies. In all these images, the dissonance between the
Classical Greek ideal and the photographer's contemporary
reality creates an enlarged space for the exploration of
homosexual desire and imagery. The Classical past no
longer serves to legitimize the imagery; rather, these
images invoke further, more complex, homoerotic
desires.