The Resurrection of Roy Blakey

Throughout the '70s, Roy Blakey shot one beautiful male nude after another. It's time for a rediscovery.

In 1998, photographer and writer Reed Massengill‹who has published image books of his own male nudes, such as Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary‹located an e-mail address for a Roy Blakey in Minneapolis and sent a blind-shot message to it. Blakey says that Massengill wrote, "'I'm a huge fan of yours and think your work should be brought back for a new generation, published and exhibited.' And he has made all that happen. I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

Roy Blakey traces his interest in photography back to his army stint in the early '50s. "Every time I had four pennies and three days together, I would take off and go to Spain or Italy or Paris, and I was taking pictures all the time." Upon his discharge, he pursued another of his interests, ice-skating, and toured for many years with Holiday on Ice, performing in such countries as Thailand, Japan and Russia.

In 1967, his last tour dropped him off in New York City. "I told myself, I'll visit my friends here for three days, then head out west. But you know how those New Yorkers are. They said, 'Why in the world do you want to go to California?' like I was a complete idiot." He looked around and found a loft. "Three days turned into 25 years."

In his new loft, which sat above Billy's Topless Bar in the Flower District, Blakey began working his show business connections and shooting entertainers' head shots. Over the years he shot such celebrities as Chita Rivera, Shirley MacLaine, Tommy Tune, Divine and gay male porn-star pioneer Cal Culver (a.k.a. Casey Donovan), whom Blakey shared a Fire Island Pines house with for many summers. These celebrity images often graced the pages of magazines of the period, including the semi-gay entertainment monthly After Dark.

Of that time, he says, "It seemed strange to me that there were not serious photographers of the male nude. I put a little ad in The Village Voice. The ad stated that in exchange for a nude session, the photographer would shoot your head shots for free." A few people showed up because of this one-time-only ad, and word of mouth kept a steady supply of young male models pushing his buzzer from then on.

Unlike most physique photographers before him‹like Bruce of Los Angeles or George Platt Lynes‹Blakey's images are devoid of props or garments. "Before, it was all about photographing guys with sailor hats and cowboy chaps, or leaning against a Greek column."

In contrast, Blakey's classically inspired black-and-white 35mm compositions locate the completely nude figure in dramatically lit poses against the void of plain, seamless backgrounds. "It was more difficult because they didn't have anything to play with. Well, of course they had something to play with, but you know what I mean. Most of the people I worked with had not posed nude before, so that also made it more of a challenge."

These sessions led to the 1972 publication of HE, Blakey's first book and one of the first photography books to exclusively focus on the male nude. Around that time, Blakey also boasted a solo show of his work that was held at the infamous Continental Bathhouse and reviewed in The New York Times. Though he maintains that the reviewer was just "looking for an excuse to enter the bathhouse." Blakey moved to Minneapolis in 1993, where today he shares a photography studio with his niece Keri Pickett, whose book Faeries documents a radical faeries community. He continues to shoot portraits and nudes, and is responsible for the IceStage Archive, the largest collection of theatrical ice-show memorabilia. He hopes that his current solo photo exhibition, which premiered at New York City's Leslie-Lohman Gallery, will travel.

Of his 30-year-old male nude work and the modern reception it's received, Blakey says, "I get the most satisfaction from the pictures where I think the lighting worked well. Most people, however, are looking at the guy and thinking, Do I like this guy; is he my type? It's shocking to me when people walk by the pictures that I think are my great masterpieces and go stand by the ones of the guy that's cute. But I'm learning."

Roy Blakey's '70s Male Nudes is available at Buygay.com.

Words by Joe. E. Jeffreys
Read more reviews in the Stimulator archive.

Experience the sextraordinary in the latest issue of Unzipped Monthly, on sale now.