MEMORIES OF A MANGY DIRTY OLD MAN---In his own words.
(THANKS GROUCHO FOR THE IDEA FOR THIS TITLE)
I am not a professional photographer and certainly not a decent writer. I just thought a few might be interested in the recollections of a dirty old man as he took pictures of some fine young guys over the years. Virtually none of the famous vintage gay photographers have much to say about their sessions or relationships with their models. Since my work is virtually unknown, I will include the write ups with the postings of the pictures of the guy being written about.
A few rules I mostly followed. No one's real name has been used, although I have permission to take and use the photographs, I am not sure about permissions to write about them, so name changes are in order. Sometimes I used names somewhat like the real name and reversed first and last names. For instance Robert White might become Blackie Roberts. Since these guys are mostly all unknown, it is best they remain that way.
All events written about are true, but I have taken the usual literary license. Primarily I combined incidents from two events or more into one, selected only events and details that might interest others, wrote things from my point of view and so that I would look good. I also tried to make the model look good and be interesting. As best I could I tried not to exaggerate, but clearly may not have remembered things from 15 to nearly 50 years ago that well.
I took pictures of all the fine young men I could for the purpose of capturing their naked beauty in youthful splendor, so that I could enjoy it later. I am a voyeur in the classic sense and more than just looking at naked guys, I am even more excited if I took the picture and can associate the pleasure of that moment with the image now.
Let there be no doubt that every guy I photographed I wanted some sexual contact with then or shortly after words. If that was unprofessional or out of line, then I was about as unprofessional as it got. Did that cost me some models, sure it did, lots of them. Do I regret missing some shoots, yeah a few, but I would not have done it any other way, never.
I have tried to describe some of the interplay that went on during the sessions, most of it sexual in nature. I have also tried to recount the beauty and sex appeal as I saw it in each guy - their good moments, bad moments and some really funny things that happened on the way to the picture, all of which I have tried to recount.
After each of the write ups I have picked my three favorite images from that shoot and tried to described what turns me on. Anyone having a different opinion can email, however I really am attached to my work, don't need any critical remarks. Remember I'm an amateur, so I rarely got exposures exactly right, and color correcting now only makes a poor image viewable. There were lots of poorly exposed. Another favorite trick was to use outdoor film, indoors, which makes everything yellow. Some of those pics up still need correcting, but this is a slow process.
For each shoot I have put up all the pics that are able to be seen, good, bad or indifferent. My theory is let the viewer decide. I am aware that about half the pics should not be used, but I can never decide which half. I know that when I look about at the classic vintage guys, Steve Wengryn, Mark Nixon, Glenn Bishop, and a host of others, I am always thrilled to see something new, something I have never seen before, no matter how weak the pic actually is. So here they all are for each shoot.
One of the moments that I will have problems recounting are those with my brother, Mike. I am the oldest in the family of five children and Michael the youngest, nearly 16 years my junior. He was an after thought, perhaps a child my parents never intended, but when they told me he was coming I was thrilled. When he was born, I was so totally ready for one more brother I remember the excitement well.
As he grew up, he was clearly my favorite, and I enjoyed every minute of him, except sleeping with him. With limited bed space the smallest and the largest had to pair up when we had quests stay over. He was simply a terror when asleep, so much so I would wake up with him beating on me and put him on the floor to sleep. For all the things we did later, I never slept with him over night after he was a kid.
Michael decided at some point that we should be more than brothers. He hit on me and hit on me, but never directly. I made it clear we had to wait until he was 18. A day after his 18th birthday we agreed to have sex. More than that we decided to film it. This started our work together as photographers and models.
I have decided to share those first pictures of Michael and I, as wells as the hundreds we did with others and Mike solo, in the years that followed.
Michael, my beautiful baby brother, died on his 33rd birthday of aids. Writing about him these many years later will be tough, but fulfilling. This site is dedicated to all the guys who have come in and out my door, but maybe Michael, just a little more.
I started taking pictures in 1956 and shot my first roll of myself, and if I do say so the effort should have made me give up male model photography forever. The only thing positive about these pics was that they showed I have a big dick. In fact at the time I was my current height 5' 10 1/2", but my weight was a rail thin 130 lbs. This really made my dick look really big against my toothpick body.
My next session was to take pictures of my cousin-Ralph Fredrickson. He was not gay, but enjoyed modeling and had a flair for posing. There were some fabulous spread shots, that I can visualize today. He worked cheap and we did 3 sessions.
Unfortunately my ever prying mother found my early work and chucked it all. This ended any semblance of mother-son relationship as she was horrified I was gay (this was her awakening) and that I had used a family member for my perversion. I was enraged she had thrown all my precious work out. The rest of her life and a lot of mine was changed/damaged by this one episode. I have nothing left of this work, except for 2 pics I had sent to a private lab for duplicate negatives that I planned to give to a friend. I did manage to send about 5 or 6 small packets of photos to other friends so there are some pics floating around somewhere. I have never located or seen these items.
I will post the two pics of Ralph, but because he was not of age (21 at that time) they are not full nudes. As a matter of fact I wasn't 21 either. Remember "Beekcake" Bob Mizer started this way.
I never forgave my mother, nor did she forgive me. She went to her grave thinking of me as nothing more than a faggot. At the time of her witch hunt, my room was full of baseball cards and comics books, I often mused why couldn't she be like most moms and throw out the collectibles and leave my private stuff alone. Not only did this do a number on my mother-son relationship, but her entire family hated me, except for my model/cousin Ralph, who went to Sharks games and continued a normal cousin relationship over the years.
From the beginning, I decided not to use posing straps, unless there was an outside reason. Remember this was 1956 and all the photography I was seeing was draped in some manner. My object was to capture naked beauty, not fig leafed or otherwise concealed guys. No one ever asked to be covered, in fact most could not see a reason for it when it became necessary. I did take a couple of underwear shots of Ralph to get us started, but once naked he didn't want to do it any other way. My brother Michael criticized me for not doing pics in clothes or briefs, and he was right. Too much Fred Kovert in me. There is a photoshoot of Michael is his swim suit and they are hot pics now.
All this meant I had to develop all my own film and there were plenty of occasions where this was a problem and some great efforts lost. The most important was the mistakes made in processing the work I did on Chuck Steury and Bob Jackson. These would be historic pics if I had them today, but they are still historic memories. Since I continued to live with my mother, I did not do any more photography until 1959, which is where our photographic adventures take off...
