 They might be kitsch by today’s standards but Bruce Bellas’ ‘beefcake’ images played an important role in shaping erotic gay male photography.Most gay men are familiar with the homoerotic beefcake photos, usually in black and white, of the 1950s and 1960s in which rough-looking trade posed in pouches that didn’t even cover tan lines, or else in cowboy regalia or ancient Roman garb. These were usually the work of the famed Bob Mizer who set up the Athletic Model Guild in the 1940s to promote and sell his material. But, equally important as a beefcake pioneer was Bruce Bellas who became known as Bruce of LA. Bellas, born in Alliance, Nebraska, in 1909, became a high school chemistry teacher in the 1930s but spent his spare time photographing hyper-masculine young men such as soldiers and farmhands. He was arrested on an obscenity charge and lost his teaching position after which he moved to California, befriended Bob Mizer, and began shooting beefcake at Muscle Beach. Later he went to work for Joe Weider’s bodybuilding empire as staff photographer and his pics appeared in Strength and Health, Muscle Power, and Tomorrow’s Man. In his more-than-three-decade career, he shot icons such as Steve Reeves, Bob McCune, Joe Dallesandro and Brian Idol. By the 1960s he was well-known enough to publish his own magazine, The Male Figure, which survived 36 issues, as well as shooting 8mm beefcake movies. As censorship changed in the US, Bruce became involved with The Private File, an erratic magazine which featured full-frontal male nudity and erections. By this time he was in poor health and he died while on holiday in Canada in 1974. Although to modern gay sensibility his photographs appear kitsch and/or camp, they were the epitome of gay male erotic photographic imagery in a period of heavy-handed censorship and gay repression, as well as influencing the future stalwarts Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, Mel Roberts, David Hockney and Herb Ritts. Now the expensive Bruce of Los Angeles: Inside/Outside (powerHouse Books) by Vince Aletti has collected over 100 full-color images, all masterfully restored from the original color negatives contained in a unique slipcase, and includes a DVD of 12 digitally remastered films. As Aletti’s writes in his introduction: “Bruce’s work is important for various reasons, but I think its greatest accomplishment is that it presents images of men that are thoroughly unapologetic. They are of men who were open to posing for other men – no apologies, no excuses. Bruce was making images of men that had never been made before. It’s impossible to imagine 20th-Century photography without Bruce”.
Bruce of Los Angeles: Inside/Outside is available through powerHouse Books.
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A slice of beefcake
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