A NEW YOUNG PHYSIQUE
My DNA is mixed up in Your DNA… and it began with mass murder! Bloodsoaked orchards conjure one reader’s past as it correlates to his success in shooting strapping young men – for artistic purposes, of course.
Rarely has any magazine hit me with two stories that were as personally meaningful and interlocked as a recent issue of DNA [#169]. First, I was stunned to see the feature story about a 40-year-old mass murder trial [ Machete Murders Of Sutter County]. As familiar as I thought I was with this sensational case, I was surprised to realise it would be of interest to the contemporary gay community. The second piece, the Editor’s letter on the terror of buying one’s first gay photo magazine, tied – remarkably – back into the first story.
My life and career as a photographer goes back to the locale and era of the machete murders of Sutter County. I knew not just the ranch on which the bodies were uncovered, but I cut my teeth as a photographer at the Appeal-Democrat, the local newspaper that is repeatedly referenced in Jesse Archer’s wellwritten and documented story.
I began working at the newspaper while I was a high school sophomore. Starting as a darkroom apprentice, I learned photography from the ground up in the days of film, chemicals, darkrooms, flash bulbs and 4”x5” Graflex cameras. I learned respect for Ansel Adams, Leica, Agfa and marveled at the speed of films like Tri-X Pan. With the newspaper’s equipment, I covered sports at my high school, capturing the local jocks in action at basketball and football games.
What wasn’t to love? I was a contributing photographer for the high school yearbook as well but there was an undeniable cachet in being able to get pictures of my classmates into the pages of the local daily newspaper. It gave me an “in” with a crowd that I otherwise would have been locked out of, and in no small measure it helped hone my social skills in high school.
By my senior year, I was a full-fledged photographer for the newspaper, sent out on assignments ranging from local fashion shows to Rotary Club dinners to legitimate news events. For a daily newspaper with a circulation of 15,000 in northern California in the 1960s, it was a heady job for a high school student. More often than not my assignments were auto accidents and house fires, but there were occasional news events that might include the governor or a presidential candidate. In time, I was writing not just the cut-lines that accompanied my pictures, but also short feature stories. It was enough to convince a high school student that journalism might be a worthy profession to pursue. When I eventually left for college, I did so with the understanding that my newspaper job would be waiting for me if I ever wanted to come back.
And return I did; the summer after college. However, what I found waiting was simply my old job. That was nice, to be sure, but hugely discouraging as well. I had started at the newspaper at the age of 15, earning $1.55 an hour. Now, several years later, I was back as a college graduate earning $1.65 an hour. My raise was thanks solely to the minimum wage having been increased by 10¢. That fall I turned my back on my budding career in photojournalism to head to graduate school (and presumably more money). On my last day at the newspaper, not only did I have a front page photo, but I also had my first front-page byline. Fittingly, it was a run-of-the-mill car accident; it only pushed me faster toward the bright lights and the big city.
Grad school led me east and away from journalism. And so it was in New York City that I woke up one spring morning in 1971, the radio blaring about bodies being dug up in the Sullivan orchards outside of Yuba City. Half-awake, in a bed thousands of miles away, not only was I listening to a hometown story, but I knew that orchard, the owners, and other names I was hearing. I had attended parties on that ranch. I had shot photographs in the orchards around the area.
I had earlier discovered for myself the privacy that the area’s sprawling orchards afforded trespassers. Along the riverbanks, they offered a perfect venue for undisturbed photo shoots. Using my high school’s mascot, the Indian brave, as a theme, I enticed popular jocks to pose for feature yearbook photos. Over time, several of the hunkiest jocks were willing to strip down and strike physique poses in provocative Native-American costumes consisting of little more than fancy headdresses and skimpy breechcloths. This was also about the time that I first ventured into the local newsstand at the lower end of town to gawk – heart in throat – at issues of The Young Physique, an early art photography magazine. The photos were inspirational in every conceivable way but it took several visits to muster the courage to actually buy a copy. (As mentioned by DNA’s Editor, I tried – unsuccessfully – to steal one first.) Although confident that I wasn’t likely to encounter anyone I knew, it was hard just to get the courage to enter that rough part of town. Now, years later, thanks to DNA, I learn that the proprietor of the Guadalajara Café (located just doors away from the magazine stand) was implicated in the mass murders.
I followed the machete murders story as closely as I could, but coverage in New York City papers was infrequent, and in time the story fell from my consciousness. (The several
“I woke up one spring morning in 1971, the radio blaring about bodies being dug up in the Sullivan orchards outside of Yuba City… I knew that orchard,
the owners, and other names I was hearing.”
gay angles to the murders were news to me when I read Archer’s reporting in DNA.) At this same time I was also drifting away from not just journalism, but from photography as well. As an apprentice photographer I had learned a personal truth: capturing images in the camera is only half the creative process. The darkroom and printmaking were equally important. Lacking access to a darkroom in my early years in New York, my interest in taking pictures waned.
I did not lose interest in photography, however, and my interest in the subject – and commercial graphics – only increased with the career choice that followed grad school. I entered advertising and, a few years after leaving the California newspaper, I was working in the creative department of a Madison Avenue ad agency. To my surprise, my writing skills were rewarded over my art and photography skills. Within a few years I was holding management positions whereby I was directing not just writers but art directors and photographers and the related creative talent hired to execute national advertising campaigns.
In a long and rewarding career, photography was never far from my professional and personal interests. On occasion, I took photos myself that were used in marketing campaigns and national publications, but more often my
“In short order I found myself wondering what a respectable gay man was doing standing in front of naked women, but I was loving it.”
involvement with photography was from a managerial position. Fortunate to have had a lucrative career that was not just professionally rewarding, I had the freedom to retire early and I did so with the objective of quickly getting my hands back on a camera. With darkrooms now on computers, I wanted to return to the creative process.
Amazingly, despite all my qualifications and years with a camera, I had no experience in one of the most basic environments of the photographer: I had never worked in a studio with professional lights. For me, lighting is the very essence of photography and in the closed setting of a studio, the photographer has complete control over light. That’s where I wanted to be. (It did not escape my notice that this was also an ideal venue to pursue my interest in physique photography that dates back to the discovery of those magazines).
Fortuitously, my New York home is close to the historic photography district in midtown Manhattan. With hundreds of studios within blocks of my apartment, I found a workshop in fashion and physique photography being offered by a local studio owner. Knowing where his market was, his workshops featured professional fashion models who bared it all for budding photographers. In short order I found myself wondering what a respectable gay man was doing standing in front of naked women, but I was loving it. (And perhaps that was a stroke of luck that allowed me to focus my attention on the craft at hand.)
Within a few months the studio owner (with a thriving career in TV production) approached me with a proposal to utilise his underused space: we would start a studio that specialised in head shots and portfolio work for the actors, actresses and models arriving daily to the city in a never-ending stream. With contacts in the fashion industry (and his straight eye), he would specialise in the women; with my gay eye, I’d focus on the men. And since neither one of us needed to support ourselves with the work, we could undercut the competition who worked to pay the bills.
In short order, my new professional life became a reality and a new studio took shape. The physical studio space has since changed and I now work largely on my own, but New Manhattan Studios has prospered. Being located in New York City is both a handicap and a blessing. Countering the staggering cost of doing business in New York is the immense benefit of operating in one of the world’s fashion capitals, with access to some of the most beautiful models (and would-be models) in the business.
In the short time I’ve been at this, I have had the opportunity to work with models from all over the country and around the world. I’ve had sessions with a just-landed foreign model whose agent had to act as translator (and prodded him to bare it all) and I’ve had models call just because they’re in town on business or for Fashion Week. As I’ve expanded out of the studio (and city), I’ve even had the chance to shoot, again, in a California orchard!
It’s challenging to be searching for “my voice” at this age, but the burst of creative growth is an exhilarating high that I haven’t known in years. I stand in awe of practitioners such as Rick Day or Mark Henderson, whose styles are so distinctive as to not even require watermarks. But as I work to establish an identifiable look of my own, there is no doubt that my style and eye have been heavily influenced by the many talented and creative individuals I was privileged to work with in my years on Madison Avenue. And I can’t help but acknowledge my debt to the mid-20th Century pioneers of physique art whose work filled the magazines in the store at the wrong end of my hometown.
Forty years later I am grateful that DNA continues to provide photographers, models and their fans the opportunity to enjoy such art. There are few such venues left. I’m confident that, years from now, some artist or model will look back as fondly on this magazine as my generation looks back on The Young Physique.