What do you think?
Rate this book
Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography
There was a time in America when two men pictured with their arms wrapped around each other, or perhaps holding hands, weren’t necessarily seen as sexually involved—a time when such gestures could be seen simply as those of intimate friendship rather than homoeroticism.
Such is the time John Ibson evokes in Picturing Men , a striking visual record of changes in attitudes about relationships between gentlemen, soldiers, cowboys, students, lumberjacks, sailors, and practical jokers. Spanning from 1850 to 1950, the 142 everyday photographs that richly illustrate Picturing Men radiate playfulness, humor, and warmth. They portray a lost world for American a time when their relationships with each other were more intimate than they commonly are today, regardless of sexual orientation. Picturing Men starkly contrasts the calm affection displayed in earlier photographs with the absence of intimacy in photos from the mid-1950s on. In doing so, this lively, accessible book makes a significant contribution to American history and cultural studies, gender studies, and the history of photography.
Such is the time John Ibson evokes in Picturing Men , a striking visual record of changes in attitudes about relationships between gentlemen, soldiers, cowboys, students, lumberjacks, sailors, and practical jokers. Spanning from 1850 to 1950, the 142 everyday photographs that richly illustrate Picturing Men radiate playfulness, humor, and warmth. They portray a lost world for American a time when their relationships with each other were more intimate than they commonly are today, regardless of sexual orientation. Picturing Men starkly contrasts the calm affection displayed in earlier photographs with the absence of intimacy in photos from the mid-1950s on. In doing so, this lively, accessible book makes a significant contribution to American history and cultural studies, gender studies, and the history of photography.
260 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
145 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 19, 2023
Archival photos of men hugging, putting their arms around each other and engaging in other physical touch have always been of interest to me; these photos periodically crop up online in shares, often with a lot of speculation on the nature of the relationship between the men pictured. So when I found out about John Ibson's book, Picturing Men, a photography book exclusively on the subject of physical male intimacy in photography, I was pretty eager to pick it up.
It's worth noting that Ibson is himself gay. I think it's mostly important to acknowledge because a lot of times this topic is derailed by some heterosexual men's desire to scrub these photos of any potential homoerotic context due to their own conscious or unconscious homophobia, while conversely I think queer men are so often deprived of representation in historical record that they very understandably want to read these photos as being queer representation, since so often such relationships are censored and downplayed even when indisputable or near-indisputable historical proof shows their existence. A recurrent theme in Ibson's book speaks to this: "an important part of the little-understood story of men's relationships with each other [is that these] unions…may have been erotic more often than realized yet less often than feared." That is; men in these photographs were more often queer than they or viewers historically admitted to being, because their relationships were so stigmatized. But conversely, homophobia has made it so that especially in the post Cold War era, any photo of men touching is likely to be read as inherently queer.
In that context one of the first things that Ibson speaks to, that I think is very helpful when looking at these photos, is that it may not actually always be worth scrutinizing whether the photographs are of queer men or not because the fact remains that such photos were considered socially normative and did not necessarily read as queer to their audience, meaning such intimate contact between men was seen as normal regardless of whether they were attracted to men, women, or both. The photorecord of early daguerreotypes begins around the 1860s with men openly putting their arms around each other, sitting in each other's laps, and crossdressing, and by the 1950s all of these forms of intimacy and play are all but completely absent in photographs of men except the most private of kodak photos.
Quoting Ibson:
Perhaps regardless of their sexual orientation, many American men might well be reminded that there are many forms of intimacy in addition to sexual gratification and that not all types of physical intimacy are sexual. One of the several sacrifices that many men make to homophobia is to deny themselves the full pleasure of another's touch. The lesson comes early, in the "touch taboo" for males. One study of American children noted that "as '' talk increases, relaxed and cuddling patterns of touch decrease among boys. Kindergarten and first-grade boys touch one another frequently and with ease, with arms around shoulders, hugs, and holding hands. By fifth grade, touch among boys becomes more constrained, gradually shifting to mock violence and the use of poking, shoving, and ritual gestures like "giving five.""
The 1910s or so is when concern for masculine performance in photographs really begins in Ibson's estimation, with industrialization as a potential factor; staged photographs of men "being manly" become increasingly common, and homosocial touch increasingly rare, especially in staged or professional photos. The other, perhaps even larger factor, is that beginning in the 1890s the concept of a homosexuality as an thing you are rather than thing you do first emerges, driving the first wave of homophobia as fears of being perceived not just as someone who engages in a "deviant" activity but who is inherently "deviant" begin to take hold in the western imagination. Photographs of men dressed as cowboys, wrestling, hunting, or drinking and smoking become a way to signal oneself as masculine.
Ibson also talks at length about how male intimacy was more often on display in photographs in areas where men worked without the presence of women, particularly in mining, logging, and of course the military in both world wars. His chapter on WWII is especially interesting, because male intimacy in WWII photos becomes, after a strong cooling off period, suddenly briefly acceptable again and vets are photographed with arms around each other, cuddling or unselfconsciously at play. Ibson also goes into detail into some of the homoerotic activity that happens during both wars, stories which are alternately moving, sad, and hilariously raunchy:
"When soldiers would ride a transport truck on their way to the nighttime movies, those who wanted oral sex "tried to sit on the side benches of the canvas-covered truck," recalled this veteran. "Depending on how horny you were, and how badly you wanted to see Betty Grable, you could ride the trucks until you were satisfied…. Daytime sexual relief could be obtained at a spot on the seashore marked by three reddish rocks soaring up like phallic symbols at the beach where many units went bare-ass bathing."
Interestingly, one area where the photograph record of men shows them surprisingly distant across time is in sports photos, especially starting in the 1920s. Although sports are both historically and currently held up as a site of intense homosocial male bonding, Ibson points out that this is also one of the areas where male heteronormativity and masculinity is the most intensely policed, perhaps because there is so much intimate homosocial contact, something that Oreinstein mentions in her Atlantic article "The Miseducation of the American Boy." (It's worth noting that after WWII, this is also increasingly the case in the Military.)
Ibson also touches on the Boy Scouts origins as actually policing masculinity, despite being a site of homosocial bonding:
…the origins of the Boy Scouts has argued that the group "served the needs of adult men as well as adolescent boys and provided men an opportunity to counteract the perceived feminizing forces of their lives and act according to the traditional masculine manuscript. ...A writer in 1912 insisted that the REAL Boy Scout is not a 'sissy' [nor is he] a hothouse plant, like Little Lord Fauntleroy."
The second big (and perhaps larger) social change that suppresses male intimacy is the end of the second world war and the beginning of the Cold War, where any behavior that threatens the primacy of the American nuclear family and the pretense of normalcy is treated as an existential crisis. Soon, the sanctity of the American Nuclear Family and White Picket Fence is enforced with a vengeance, and Ibson quotes Corber as saying "the homosexualization of left-wing political activity by the discourses of national security enabled Cold War liberalism to emerge as the only acceptable alternative to the forces of reaction in postwar American Society."
Overall, I found Ibson's book really moving. The photos provide a glimpse into a fascinating world of lost touch between men. While sifting through this lost time, Ibson makes a compelling case that the modern world of touch-starved young men is deeply sad and troubling, pushing back against the narrative that male-male bonding encourages toxic masculinity. Instead, it is homophobia and the policing of male touch that super-charged the conditions for this toxicity. I highly recommend his book to anyone interested in the history of male intimacy.
It's worth noting that Ibson is himself gay. I think it's mostly important to acknowledge because a lot of times this topic is derailed by some heterosexual men's desire to scrub these photos of any potential homoerotic context due to their own conscious or unconscious homophobia, while conversely I think queer men are so often deprived of representation in historical record that they very understandably want to read these photos as being queer representation, since so often such relationships are censored and downplayed even when indisputable or near-indisputable historical proof shows their existence. A recurrent theme in Ibson's book speaks to this: "an important part of the little-understood story of men's relationships with each other [is that these] unions…may have been erotic more often than realized yet less often than feared." That is; men in these photographs were more often queer than they or viewers historically admitted to being, because their relationships were so stigmatized. But conversely, homophobia has made it so that especially in the post Cold War era, any photo of men touching is likely to be read as inherently queer.
In that context one of the first things that Ibson speaks to, that I think is very helpful when looking at these photos, is that it may not actually always be worth scrutinizing whether the photographs are of queer men or not because the fact remains that such photos were considered socially normative and did not necessarily read as queer to their audience, meaning such intimate contact between men was seen as normal regardless of whether they were attracted to men, women, or both. The photorecord of early daguerreotypes begins around the 1860s with men openly putting their arms around each other, sitting in each other's laps, and crossdressing, and by the 1950s all of these forms of intimacy and play are all but completely absent in photographs of men except the most private of kodak photos.
Quoting Ibson:
Perhaps regardless of their sexual orientation, many American men might well be reminded that there are many forms of intimacy in addition to sexual gratification and that not all types of physical intimacy are sexual. One of the several sacrifices that many men make to homophobia is to deny themselves the full pleasure of another's touch. The lesson comes early, in the "touch taboo" for males. One study of American children noted that "as '' talk increases, relaxed and cuddling patterns of touch decrease among boys. Kindergarten and first-grade boys touch one another frequently and with ease, with arms around shoulders, hugs, and holding hands. By fifth grade, touch among boys becomes more constrained, gradually shifting to mock violence and the use of poking, shoving, and ritual gestures like "giving five.""
The 1910s or so is when concern for masculine performance in photographs really begins in Ibson's estimation, with industrialization as a potential factor; staged photographs of men "being manly" become increasingly common, and homosocial touch increasingly rare, especially in staged or professional photos. The other, perhaps even larger factor, is that beginning in the 1890s the concept of a homosexuality as an thing you are rather than thing you do first emerges, driving the first wave of homophobia as fears of being perceived not just as someone who engages in a "deviant" activity but who is inherently "deviant" begin to take hold in the western imagination. Photographs of men dressed as cowboys, wrestling, hunting, or drinking and smoking become a way to signal oneself as masculine.
Ibson also talks at length about how male intimacy was more often on display in photographs in areas where men worked without the presence of women, particularly in mining, logging, and of course the military in both world wars. His chapter on WWII is especially interesting, because male intimacy in WWII photos becomes, after a strong cooling off period, suddenly briefly acceptable again and vets are photographed with arms around each other, cuddling or unselfconsciously at play. Ibson also goes into detail into some of the homoerotic activity that happens during both wars, stories which are alternately moving, sad, and hilariously raunchy:
"When soldiers would ride a transport truck on their way to the nighttime movies, those who wanted oral sex "tried to sit on the side benches of the canvas-covered truck," recalled this veteran. "Depending on how horny you were, and how badly you wanted to see Betty Grable, you could ride the trucks until you were satisfied…. Daytime sexual relief could be obtained at a spot on the seashore marked by three reddish rocks soaring up like phallic symbols at the beach where many units went bare-ass bathing."
Interestingly, one area where the photograph record of men shows them surprisingly distant across time is in sports photos, especially starting in the 1920s. Although sports are both historically and currently held up as a site of intense homosocial male bonding, Ibson points out that this is also one of the areas where male heteronormativity and masculinity is the most intensely policed, perhaps because there is so much intimate homosocial contact, something that Oreinstein mentions in her Atlantic article "The Miseducation of the American Boy." (It's worth noting that after WWII, this is also increasingly the case in the Military.)
Ibson also touches on the Boy Scouts origins as actually policing masculinity, despite being a site of homosocial bonding:
…the origins of the Boy Scouts has argued that the group "served the needs of adult men as well as adolescent boys and provided men an opportunity to counteract the perceived feminizing forces of their lives and act according to the traditional masculine manuscript. ...A writer in 1912 insisted that the REAL Boy Scout is not a 'sissy' [nor is he] a hothouse plant, like Little Lord Fauntleroy."
The second big (and perhaps larger) social change that suppresses male intimacy is the end of the second world war and the beginning of the Cold War, where any behavior that threatens the primacy of the American nuclear family and the pretense of normalcy is treated as an existential crisis. Soon, the sanctity of the American Nuclear Family and White Picket Fence is enforced with a vengeance, and Ibson quotes Corber as saying "the homosexualization of left-wing political activity by the discourses of national security enabled Cold War liberalism to emerge as the only acceptable alternative to the forces of reaction in postwar American Society."
Overall, I found Ibson's book really moving. The photos provide a glimpse into a fascinating world of lost touch between men. While sifting through this lost time, Ibson makes a compelling case that the modern world of touch-starved young men is deeply sad and troubling, pushing back against the narrative that male-male bonding encourages toxic masculinity. Instead, it is homophobia and the policing of male touch that super-charged the conditions for this toxicity. I highly recommend his book to anyone interested in the history of male intimacy.
June 6, 2020
Terrific collection! Belongs on every shelf!
March 4, 2012
This is a phenomenal book. Ibson is an avid collector of antique photos throughout American history. In this book, he documents men's changing relationships with one another over the course of 50 years. The most interesting finding is that a great deal of early photographs of men present them in extremely close contact with one another. In many of the pictures, the men appear to be in homosexual relationships by today's standards. Ibson uses these photos to chart the demise of tactility among men as homophobia increased. Gradually, men's relationships became less close, more stoic, and touching was something that was not presented for cameras. Really interesting read. Lots of great pictures from his collection to illustrate the points he makes. Great project. Great source of data.
December 28, 2018
I had Mr. Ibson as a professor in college so I decided to read this book as a way to understand more of who he was as a writer and a person. This book was eloquently written and still showed so much personality and wit and it touched on a subject that I was not well versed in so it taught me a lot. I loved his class and I loved reading this book. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys beautiful pictures and thoughtful commentary.
March 8, 2012
For several years, this has been one of my favorite books. I use it at the beginning of my undergraduate class on men and masculinity, to provide some historical basis for thinking about shifts and changes in men's lives over the past century. The photographs are amazing, and Ibson's analysis is always smart, never heavy-handed. My students really like the book.
January 27, 2008
This book traces changes in male intimacy and the medicalization of sexuality through found photos of men together. The photos in this book are AMAZING and the text is almost as interesting.
January 1, 2009
I checked this out of the library and immediately went online to buy my own copy. An essential chronicle of images.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews