A history of male photographers: analyzing men as men in scientific, commercial, and art photography, 1870 to the present

Abstract

What, if anything, makes photography masculine? This book begins the task of recognizing men's photography as the work of men and their masculinities. From the composite portraiture at the male-only university of the 1880s, to the work of still-living photographer Reagan Louie, the authors situate their photographic subjects in the context of evolving racial, gender, and class identities in Europe and America. Several of the authors analyze instances when men photographers subverted hegemonic masculinity by exposing its signs. The authors are also attuned to the role of queerness and the queer gaze in fine art, documentary, and fashion photography of the last century. Common to them all is a refusal to take for granted the constructed masculinity that surrounded photography's practitioners and institutions, whether those practitioners paid its costs or drew its dividends.