It is particularly appropriate that the first volume in this series should feature Bruce of Los Angeles, whose career as a physique photographer spanned almost exactly the decades 1940 to 1970, and whose groundbreaking work has come to exemplify a contemporary portal of the male body. Born in the horse-and-buggy days of 1909 in quaint and quiet Alliance, Nebraska, Bruce Harry Bellas grew up in an era of propriety and discretion. He attended school and college in his home state and became a chemistry teacher. But two world wars had changed America, and the perfection of affordable conveniences like telephones, the automobile, and even the camera both allowed and encouraged the adventurous individual to leave Kansas (or Nebraska) and seek his own "Oz".

Bruce took up the camera early, driving though the American heartland taking pictures of farms and farm boys, athletic events and athletes, and soldiers and sailors hitching rides along the way. He grew to love traveling back and forth across the United States, which he would continue to do all his life. By 1946 he had already made road trips to California, and in 1947 he began to turn his camera hobby into a serious professional pursuit. His first model was the lithe and handsome Leonard Chambers (also photographed by Bob Mizer at AMG Studio in this period). Inspired by the work of classical physique photographers like Lon Hanagan, whose influence is readily apparent in Bruce's lighting and poses, Bruce obtained his first California business license in 1948. He took pictures at Muscle Beach in Venice and the bodybuilding contests up and down the west coast. His flair for composition and flattering eye quickly made his "snapshots" regular features in the muscle magazines published by Joe Weider and others actively promoting the growing sport.

Bruce rapidly advanced to photographing the most important figures in the world of "physical culture"; Steve Reeves, Bob McCune, George Eiferman, Dick DuBois, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Bud Counts, and many others. Not only did Bruce capture these men posing onstage, relaxing backstage and working out at the gym; many of them donned skimpy "posing straps" and posed for more formal physique photos in Bruce's studio and the scenic beach and desert locations.

By the mid 1950s Bruce had established his reputation and was already expanding his style into a broader range of models and posing styles. Picking the best of many young men arriving in L.A. with stars in their eyes, Bruce combined technical mastery and imagination to begin creating the body of work which would one day be recognized for its classic elegance, Hollywood glamour, and camp wit, as well as for its restrained sensuality. The growing number of "little magazines" featuring more overtly homoerotic physique photography and which regularly featured his work led Bruce to start his own magazine, "Male Figure', in 1956. By 1958 he was successful enough to buy a suburban home on Kensington Road in Los Alamitos, Ca. just south of Los Angeles. There he set up a studio in his garage, photographed models in his fenced in, manicured back yard, and perfected his highly personal style, which combined strong direction, restrained eroticism and midwestern wholesomeness.

For the next decade he captured on film the most beautiful models of his day; Joe Dallessandro, Steve Wengryn, Mark Nixon, Brian Idol and so many others. He traveled regularly to the annual rodeo in Calgary, Canada to photograph "real" cowboys, to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and its hedonistic display of outrageousness and exhibitionism, and to many cities where he met with private clients to sell his full frontal nude photos, which could not be offered by mail in that period. Despite the occasional difficulties with homophobic authorities that every physique photographer had to deal with during he 1950s and the '60s, this was productive and gratifying period in his career. He branched out into color work, made 8mm films, and even tried his hand at 3D slides. Despite the limitation of camera and film, it is easy to see the influence of Technicolor in his vivid indoor and outdoor work. While Bernard of Hollywood and his contemporaries were perfecting the post-war look of "cheesecake" photography, Bruce of Los Angeles and his imitators were creating "beefcake".

By the late 1960s American society was again beginning to change rapidly. The rural pre-war world had been replaced by the 1950s fantasy of "Father Knows Best" suburbia, which was itself being displaced by a primarily urban youth culture of the Viet Nam war era. When the courts finally allowed the publication of frontal nudity in magazines at the end of the decade, it was the end of an era for photographers like Bruce. A veritable flood of overt erotic imagery swept away the audience for the comparatively tame and "artistic" work of physique photography. Although he continued to travel and take pictures, Bruce's business dwindled and his health declined with advancing age. In 1974, while on vacation in Canada with his favorite model Scotty Cunningham, Bruce collapsed and died. Unlike many of his contemporaries who only printed photos to order and seldom made provisions for the survival of their work, Bruce left one of the most comprehensive photo archives of the time, and his estate passed through several hands intact and preserved. Today it is a growing recognition of his importance as an artist, as a creative force in the establishment of the modern American homosexual identity, and as an inspirational influence on the contemporary physique photographers from Robert Mapplethorpe to Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber. If his work seems to lack the sensuality of sophistication we have to come to expect in physique photography today, Bruce more than compensates for his sheer joy and humor and beauty he has left us.

Robert Mainardi

Taken from American Photography of the Male Nude Vol 1, 1940-1970. 2nd Printing
Bruce of Los Angeles
Janssen Publishers CC
Simons Town So. Africa
http://www.janssenbooks.co.za
ISBN 3-925443-87-8