Vince Aletti's 'Physique' Explores Homoerotic Photography Between Art and Porn

Photography critic Vince Aletti's book 'Physique' presents 250 photographic prints from his collection, featuring young men in athletic poses from the 1930s to the 1960s. The images, often disguised as health advertisements, offered covert sexual titillation during a time when homosexuality was largely criminalized in the US until the early 1960s. Aletti, now eighty, traces his interest in sthenolagnia to discovering photographs of naked youths in a magazine at age eight or nine, later smuggling home copies of 'Adonis', 'Body Beautiful', and 'Tomorrow's Man'. He began appreciating them as artworks and sociological artefacts later in life. The collection includes images of a naked man carrying a television, another flexing while dropping a record needle, as well as couples, groups, tattoos, and tan lines. Subjects include bikers, mechanics, sailors, and warriors, some reenacting poses reminiscent of Michelangelo's Dying Slave. The book hovers between art and pornography, framed as queer aesthetics blossoming under oppressive conditions, but also appealing to those seeking a modern Laocoön. Published by SPBH Editions, £50 hardcover, from the April 2025 issue of ArtReview.