George Duroy
Berlin: Bruno Gmunder, 2001.

BelAmi is a gay pornographic film studio founded in 1993 by the Slovak filmmaker George Duroy, whose pseudonym was taken from the protagonist of Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami. Established in the years following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the studio became closely associated with performers from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, presenting an idealised image of youthful masculine beauty and helping to define the archetype of the Euro-twink in contemporary gay erotica. BelAmi distinguished itself through a polished and often narrative-driven style of filmmaking. Rather than relying solely on a succession of scenes, many productions incorporated simple storylines, characterisation, and location shooting in rural, coastal, and historic European settings, lending the films a degree of atmosphere unusual within the genre at the time. The same aesthetic informed the studio’s extensive publishing programme, including calendars and photobooks produced with Bruno Gmunder Verlag. These publications, combining portraiture, travel imagery, and erotic photography, are striking examples of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century gay visual culture.

Marcello Grand
Sydney: Studio Magazines, [2001].

The second instalment of the Blue magazine special issues focusing on masculine beauty through the lenses of 66 photographers who are interpreting the theme of athletic prowess and bodily strength. (not only) Blue was a glossy coffee table art magazine produced between 1995 and 2007 by Studio Magazines in Sydney, who also published the successful photography magazine, Black+White. “Blue’s agenda is to showcase artists whose work is an authentic representation of gay relationships, gay lifestyles and gay issues” (Blue’s editorial statement) and it did so in a large format filled with nude and semi nude art photography. The premiere issue featured William Yang, Tom Bianchi, Pierre et Gilles, Edmund White, Fiona McGregor, and Ian Roberts, and over its 12 year history featured work from top photographers and features on artists and celebrities including Robert Mapplethorpe, Leigh Bowery, Boy George, Erwin Olaf, k.d. lang, Bruce of LA, Dennis Rodman, Elton John, John Waters, Karl Lagerfield, Jeffrey Smart, Yukio Mishima, Paul Cadmas, William S. Burroughs, George Platt Lynes, Gilbert and George, Rupert Everett, Uma Thurman, Wilhelm von Gloeden and countless others.