Physique photography is a tradition of photography of nude or semi-nude (usually muscular) men which was largely popular between the early 20th century and the 1960s. Physique photography originated with the physical culture and bodybuilding movements of the early 20th century, but was gradually co-opted by homosexual producers and consumers, who favoured increasingly homoerotic content. The practiced reached its height in the 1950s and early 1960s with the inception of physique magazines, which existed largely to showcase physique photographs and were widely consumed by a mostly-gay audience.
Physique photography fell out of fashion toward the end of the 1960s, supplanted by increasingly explicit pornography as a result of loosening legal definitions of obscenity. Physique photographers have provided inspiration to later artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, and, towards the end of the 20th century, their work has come to be appreciated as art in its own right.[1]
- ^ Cooper 2007, p. 111.