Frank Nisi by Bruce of LA

Alwin Murtagh by John Graham

Nik Kershaw - "Human Racing"

I never knew there was a video for this song! One of Nik's best, and he made a lot of great songs!

Mel Roberts' life's work to be auctioned off...

Something unusual to report, something that leaves me feeling rather sad...

The company ProfilesInHistory.com, as part of its Michael H. Epstein & Scott E. Schwimer Glamour Photography Auction, will be auctioning off Mel Roberts' life's work -- all of his existing negatives, prints, videos, and copyrights -- on March 27.

It still seems weird to me that Mel is gone, just over two years now. I only learned about his death last summer, when John Palatinus mentioned it to me in passing -- kinda took my breath away!

I've written before how I had been to Mel's house in the fall of 2005, a few months before I moved out of Hollywood. He was very gracious, and full of interest in my then-website, v-m-p.org. He gave me his blessing to use any of his photos I wanted on the site, and to link back to his own email with the fact that prints from his two books, "California Boys" and "The Wild Ones," could be special ordered directly from him. (He did say he would like if if I posted more from "The Wild Ones" as that book hadn't sold quite as well as the first!) He was gung-ho with the idea of moving some images through my site, and giving me a finder's fee if/when it should happen. I had all kinds of ideas as to how to put my Mel Roberts gallery together, but what with selling the house, looking for a new one, moving and settling in, getting a new job... well, visitors to the site saw "Coming Soon -- Mel Roberts: California Boys" on the home page for a long time without ever seeing that page -- and soon enough, the whole site went down anyway when I couldn't maintain it any longer. After the move, I lost touch with Mel, and I'm very sorry that happened.

And now, the collection of work which he so proudly showed me is on the auction block. The auctioneer's estimate of the selling price is $60,000 - $80,000, with $60,000 being the opening bid. Doesn't that seem an incredibly small amount for a man's life's work -- 8000 negatives, thousands of printed photographs and the rights to his name? It leaves me rather dumbstruck that anyone would divest themselves of something so special for so little money.

Thank you, Mel, for your art, your encouragement, and your uniqueness!


I was alerted to this event through the kindness of OUT.com's online editor, Noah Michelson. Please click here to see their announcement of the event, and to view a slideshow of some wonderful pieces of Mel's work. Thank you, Noah!

beautiful Bill Melby by WPG

Another new look at an old favorite...!

Larry Scott by Milo

Johnny Longo by WPG

One of my favorite WPGers, in a pose new to me...

John Palatinus leads the Kinky Camera Club!

Another edition of Rick Castro's Kinky Camera Club was held this past Sunday at the Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood, guest-hosted by John Palatinus, and yours truly had the great good fortune to attend (but that's not too surprising, as I was John's ride into town!).

John hasn't orchestrated a physique photography session in more than 50 years, but once he got the spotlights just right, and gorgeous model Mason Garet stepped onto the seamless paper, he took complete control of the next two hours. Mason is very comfortable in front of the camera and took John's direction like a pro. We all got to see a true physique photo session come to life before our eyes! First in a g-string and work boots, then without the g-string(!), then in cowboy boots and hat -- what a trouper!


Rick's friend Christopher was in the gallery and took a turn posing as well. John asked for some clothespins -- but not for what you might think at an event called a Kinky Camera Club! -- to help pull Christopher's jockey shorts tight and smooth in the front as he sat on the black box in the center of the paper. I don't know if Christopher has done modeling before, but he certainly got into it and seemed to have a good deal of fun!

Mason came back in riding boots and a thong, but before we started taking shots again he decided to put on the black jockstrap that has been part of the gallery's window for the past week or so. Smoking hot! I'm still going through all the pictures I took (more than 200!), but here are a few that I really like so far...




After the photography we all stayed for tea and then the afternoon's second event started at 4:00 -- a Tea Party and Talk with John! John talked about how traumatic an experience it was to have a dozen police and postal inspectors barge into his apartment, steal all his equipment and prints while trashing everything else they could, and having to be in limbo for a year or more before the trial was finally finished. But he was a strong man then (and most definitely a strong man now!), and he was able to move on from that chapter and lead what can only be called an action-packed life! What a raconteur he is!

The two of us went to visit with our new friends Bob and Kim and got to take a look at Bob's physique photo collection. I won't say anything more than -- TRULY EPIC!!!! Two nicer guys you couldn't hope to meet. We all went out to dinner and then had to say our goodbyes...

So sad that my whirlwind Hollywood experience has come to an end! I lived in that town for four years and it was great to be back these past couple of weekends. Time to decompress and catch up on other bits of work. But here's hoping for more new adventures in the future...!!

(I wanted to add one more picture of John and Mason, but Blogger is not playing nice with its picture uploader tonight. I'll try again tomorrow. Good night!)

Opening night of "John Palatinus: Tomorrow's Man"

I had a great time at John's opening night at the Antebellum Gallery on Las Palmas in Hollywood!

I arrived about 6:40 and found a half dozen or more people already looking around. John was very up and excited, in spite of a terrible head cold and rough voice. As seven o'clock hit the crowd just got larger and larger and stayed packed throughout the night! I'm posting a couple of shots that I took here, but by all means go over to the Antebellum Blog to see a whole bunch more! John's friend Greg Day photographed the whole evening and I hope to be able to share some pics here soon.

Jacob Semans, aka Jake Sperm, was one of the featured artists -- his first gallery showing! --and I talked to him a few times throughout the night. He had four of his James Bond film poster-inspired self-portraits towering over us -- very sexy and humorous at the same time -- check out his website!

Rick Castro found a wonderful model, Barry Morse, who posed non-stop in the front window throughout the official 7-9 PM reception. Very hot, really into it, and his talents run beyond posing -- he's also made a short film called "Ookie Cookie," the trailer of which can be found on Youtube here.

Hot and friendly pornstar (and former Antebellum Gallery Kinky Camera Club model) Tyger Hudson was in attendance, which made John's night that much better as John is a big fan of the hunk!

Artist Dan Pyle was also there, though I didn't get to talk to him. His charcoal drawings on exhibit in the show were beautiful (and so was he!)! You can find more about him here.

My brother and his girlfriend came to the show, as did some new friends from the LA area, and even my buddy's sister and her boyfriend -- it was great to have such interest and support from my family and friends this night!

I made a couple of new acquaintances, Bob and Kim, two very enthusiastic vintage physique fans. We all exchanged cards, so I hope we get to talk again!

I'll be taking John back to Antebellum this Sunday when he'll be guest-hosting the Kinky Camera Club and then sitting down to tea afterwards to talk about his experiences. Should be another great day in this continuing adventure!

Gary Lee by WPG

Don Whitman's Western Photography Guild seemed to make a smooth transition from pouch to no-pouch photos after the 1968 decree that made male nudity legal. His style didn't radically change and he kept up a high standard for his models' appearance.

Oddly enough, unlike some pouch-era artists that eventually released their secret nude shots of their pre-1968 models, I can't think of any such shots coming from WPG.

John Palatinus exhibit at Antebellum this Sunday!

Back in June of 2007, I posted three photos (here and here) by John Palatinus, a New York photographer who seemed to appear and disappear without a trace after only a few years of work. About a year later, I received an email from the man himself, alive and well at 80 years of age, and, unbelievably, living only about 30 minutes away from me!

John included his phone number in the email and we talked for about 45 minutes that first time. I learned that he did his physique photography from 1955 through 1958, until he was shut down by a police raid against his "pornographic" "lewd" photos early in 1959. Under the name "Courtny" he had started to sell "undraped" photos -- and made the mistake of posting some of them from New Jersey, which suddenly meant he was transporting "pornography" over state lines. Why on earth the police and the post office should care about people wanting to buy naked photos, and spend months tracking his movements from his home to his small studio to the company that actually printed his photos... yeah, the 50s were different, but for fuck's sake, people, get a life! All of his photos, negatives, cameras, mailing lists -- everything stolen by the police, never to be seen again. He ended up being convicted of conspiracy to sell pornographic material, paid a hefty fine, and never took a physique photo again.



It wasn't until the spring of 2009 that we had a chance to meet in person, and because I was so incensed at the injustice that the man had none of the photos that had made so many people happy in that repressed, ultra-closeted age, I brought along with me about 25 or so printouts of the photos that I had in my collection that over the years had been positively identified as his work. It was a real surprise for him, and it was a real treat for me to hear him rattle off their names and say how much fun this one was to shoot or how this one was stand-offish, or that he got to have sex with this other one...

A short time later, John called me and asked if I would mind making up a duplicate set of the photos. He wanted to donate them to the Tom of Finland Foundation, an organization devoted to preserving the work of erotic artists of the past and present. Of course, I told him it would be no problem. But then I got to thinking, I should really try to get more material together...

I put out a call to the members of my v-m-p email group at Yahoo to send me anything they might have with Palatinus' name on it, in hopes that someone might have something that hadn't already made its way through the group. To my delight, one of the members had a nearly complete set of catalog prints under the "Palatinus" banner, and a complete set of the "Courtny" nude catalog prints. I now had names and faces for nearly all of John's models -- now I just had to go through the thousands of "unknown" pics I had spread throughout my computer! In the end, I think I pulled out about 50-75 more photos that I hadn't known were done by him -- and to this day, I still stumble over new finds... (Thank you, Chuck!)

Feeling this wasn't enough to really show the scope of his work to the people at Tom of Finland, I took a month's membership (eventually extended to a second) at the vast Tim in Vermont site to see what he might have on hand. As it turned out, nothing I didn't already have when it came to photographic images, but then I got the idea of presenting John's publishing history, and proceeded to download every magazine page that featured a photo by John, one of his ads, or even just his studio listing. Tim's magazine archive is immense, and he does his best to tag each page as accurately as possible, so I think I found every instance of John's published, credited work. (Thank you, Tim!)

With hundreds of scans compiled, now I had to print them. At first I thought to present the images as close to original size as possible, so I printed the entire "Palatinus" side of his work at 4x5 size and thought it looked nice. But then, when I went to print the first "Courtny," I realized to my horror that these were not 4x5 images but 5x7! If I were to print the nudes at their original size, the full-on physique shots would look puny in comparison, and the physique photos were what he was famous for. Nothing to do but start over again, printing the "Palatinus" shots at 7 inches tall...

So John didn't get his little batch of photos until a few months after he had asked for them. When I called to make a date to bring them over, he had no idea that he was about to receive two plastic storage boxes, each with three drawers filled with scans of photos, magazine pages and assorted promotional literature (thanks again, Tim!) - one for him and one for the Tom of Finland Foundation.

The internet is an amazing thing -- I posted a few favorite photos on my blog, then I connected with this pioneering physique photographer who was shut down just as he was really breaking through with his distinctive style, and then I was able to connect with others to pull his work back from the ether and return it to him.

End of story? Not by a long shot!

One of John's many acquaintances is Rick Castro, the famed erotic photographer and, since 2005, the proprietor of Antebellum, the country's first fetish art gallery. Seems that Rick had told John that he'd like to do an exhibit of his work, but since John didn't have any in his posession, that wasn't going to happen. But now, with this large collection of electronic images gathered in one place, maybe something could be pulled from them to put on the walls? And to make it even more interesting, John had found in a box a few forgotten pieces of his work -- eight original negatives of Tony Ames, from what appeared to be an unpublished session, and a complete set of twelve 4x5's of cowboy Pete Andrews in their original folder. Talk about good timing -- my old scanner of many years had just died, and I made sure that my new one had a negative scanner in it, and my partner had plans on buying a new Epson printer able to print 13x19 pages -- we could certainly pull some material together for a show!

Well, I won't go further into the details, but the last few months have seen my spare time scanning scanning scanning scanning photoshopping photoshopping photoshopping printing printing printing confab confab confab more printing more printing phone calls phone calls emails emails emails.... going into Hollywood three weeks ago to deliver the first batch of art, I left feeling very distressed that I hadn't prepared enough material and had let both John and Rick down, but going back the week after I left feeling much better -- seeing the art on the walls made all the difference in the world. Getting to spend a few hours with Rick in the gallery and then a wonderful tea party afterwards with some of his retail neighbors (Rick loves his tea, and I couldn't have wished for a better way to wind down the day!) made me feel that this was going to be a wonderful experience.



I've been working on all aspects of John's share of the exhibit (as you see from the exhibit announcement, there are going to be many other artists' work on display as well, all following on the aesthetic of the physique era). Something I'm rather happy with is the DVD slideshow I put together of John's work -- 300 images in 21 minutes. I played it for him a couple of days ago and got a running commentary on all the models -- really, history coming alive from this most definitely alive and vital man who I've had the great good fortune to meet. I won't lie, I'm glad that in less than two days my work will be done and the result will be left to the eye of the gallery-going world, but what will I do with my time after Sunday night? (I know, I know -- make regular posts to this blog, for a start! LOL!)

I hope that all my readers in the Los Angeles area will drop by Antebellum on Sunday night to meet John -- and I'll be there, too -- I'd love to meet you! If you can't make it opening night, the exhibit runs through March 20. Drop in to view the art (and by all means, buy something! LOL!) and talk to Rick Castro -- the man is a marvel, and if you're lucky, he might make you a cup of tea!

John, it has been a wonderful, maddening, rewarding, life-changing experience. Thank you so much! I'm so looking forward to Sunday night with you!

And because I can, I sign off tonight with an image of Tony Ames by John Palatinus from the "lost" Levi's series -- see it in person at Antebellum, 1643 N Las Palmas Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90028.

I hope to post some images from the gallery when I get back home. Good night, my friends -- see you Sunday night!

Victor Rubin by Lon of NY

An absolutely stunning scan of this 30s-era model by Alonzo Hanagan -- all thanks to our good buddy Robert for sharing it!

Two weeks from tonight --!!!!

Why haven't there been any updates to v-m-p this month? Because I have been working all my spare time on this very special project...

So much to say, but I'm buzzed and tired right now...

But this is going to be an amazing Valentine's Day evening -- !!!

Rob Chapman by Lon of London

Thanks, D A N!

Barry Craig by WPG

Rather stunning, don't you think?

Ron Rector and Mike Bradburn by Kris

For Pete --

Obviously, this is a colorized version of a b&w photo. I'm not usually into such things, but this one was done rather nicely (sorry, I don't have an ID for the touch-up artist -- I've had this for about 4 1/2 years).

"Were the World Mine"

Just finished watching this again tonight...

-- When his drama teacher casts him as Puck in his school's upcoming production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Timothy (Tanner Cohen) turns in an inspired performance, whipping up a fittingly Shakespearean love potion with the power to turn people gay. He begins, of course, with the school jock -- the object of his affection. Tom Gustafson directs this unconventional movie-musical based on his award-winning short film, "Fairies." --

Thanks for hanging with me this year, gang -- May your New Year be wonderful!

Paul Mantee ---!

This stud wears a black t-shirt almost as well as Ben Browder in "Farscape" -- only 35 years earlier! And let's not get started on the "nude" swimming-hole scene...

Download the links, join them with HJSplit and enjoy this classic film...



One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight

(Here's a taste [not from my version] -- pool party at 6:00 --!)

Darryl Powers by Champion

Kip Behar by Pat Milo