Gods In The Backyard

Boys-next-door playing Cowboys and Indians with toy bows and arrows. Surfer dudes in posing straps dancing a hula. Macho men (in moccasins) caressing cacti in the desert. Anonymous Adonises, their backs turned away from us, facing the unknown, as cool as marble sculpture on pristine pedestals. Benign bodybuilders, girlfriends by their sides, dwarfing the garish trophies they cradle in their arms like newborn babies. Hard-bitten hustlers, fresh off their Harleys, holding court in cheap motels. Sun worshipers splayed out in the sand like supple sea lions, the ocean’s foam lapping at their finely polished limbs. Rodeo studs roping in their buddies, their tattoos glistening with hard-earned sweat.

Overwrought, kitschy, hilariously camp, the images of Bruce of Los Angeles are unforgettable — and irreplaceable. As time capsules of a more innocent era, they have aged extremely well. For all their quaint, and obviously self-conscious, humor, they remain aesthetic triumphs, of light and shadows, depth and symmetry. Just as Florenz Ziegfeld glorified the American Girl in his sumptuous and racy Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway at the beginning of the century, Bruce Harry Bellas, born in Alliance, Nebraska in 1909, transformed the American Male into a veritable work of art. (His name Bellas was an ironic misnomer since it connotes “beautiful girls” in Italian — that might have been an unconscious reason for dropping it.)

Having studied chemistry as a youth, before migrating to California in the 40s, Bruce turned his talented eye to photography, snapping candid pictures at bodybuilding events for Joe Weider’s fitness magazines Strength and Health, Muscle Power and Tomorrow’s Man. Weider was tapping into a surge of interest in the male physique after the Second World War, as the nation, flush with victory, idolized these icons of hyper- masculinity. Thousands of ex-soldiers, sailors and young single men migrated to southern California to find jobs, take a stab at the movies, or simply to bask in the glow of America’s new capital of fun in the sun.

Bruce nimbly captured the spirit of these times in his Weegee-like portraits of weightlifters at Muscle Beach. The photos are just as fascinating today for what they tell us about the crowds of wide-eyed young women and men who descended in droves each weekend to catch a glimpse of the supermen on display. Bruce had a pure, natural style that exposed the clean, wholesome appeal of the sport (although Muscle Beach would soon be closed down for attracting “undesirable elements.”) But Bruce also treated his subjects, from a distance, like objects of perfection, demigods on earth to be lusted after and catered to. He made stars of such popular fitness models as Ed Fury and the great Steve Reeves, who as Hercules in films, came to personify the mythic dimensions of bodybuilding.

Noted for his generosity and affable personality, Bruce became a popular photographer for the ever-growing number of homoerotic physique magazines — picture-driven revues filled with arty male nudes (or to be more accurate, semi-nudes, since federal regulations forbade any display of male genitalia being sent through the mails.) These risque rags (some were literally stapled together on dining room tables in the publishers’s homes) created a fanciful vocabulary of homoerotic imagery, transforming traditional gay icons: sailors, construction workers and leather studs into emblems of a healthy, free-wheeling new world order.

Capitalizing on his fame, Bruce founded his own magazine, The Male Figure, which set higher standards and introduced fans to young superstars like Joe Dallesandro who went on to greater notoriety in a rash of underground Andy Warhol films. Bruce also pioneered the use of color, creating images today that seem almost surreal in their use of vivid reds and blues and yellows. And he championed the use of black models as well as Asian-Americans at a time when racial equality was not yet a popular cause.

Bruce found a loophole in the restrictive postal laws by traveling across the country, selling nude photographs out of his suitcase to an ever-widening circle of customers. He was occasionally arrested for these “trunk shows,” but fortunately never had to serve time in jail. While many of these images, especially later as standards loosened further, featured men in acute states of arousal, there was never anything pornographic or sordid about Bruce’s work. That is one reason why his pictures are so highly coveted by collectors around the world. They are powerfully erotic without being the slightest bit vulgar. Bruce transformed what had been a sleazy underground business into a legitimate artistic enterprise, even if his loyal fans were focused on more pressing concerns than composition and classical rules of proportion.

There is a carefree elegance to Bruce’s spare, pristine images. Without the otherworldly glamour of a Hollywood photographer like Hurrell or the chic austerity of Horst, Bruce brought a homespun innocence to his art. Yet he imbued his discoveries with their own celebrity cachet. The images are deceptively simple. Few photographers can rival his deft use of props and scenery, or his knack at getting models to reflect a nobility they most likely lacked. These accomplishments are all the more remarkable considering that many of Bruce’s pictures were shot hurriedly in the garage of his suburban house, where he built a makeshift studio, or under intense conditions in the desert, without the benefit of a crew or stylist.

As with many lasting artists, whose reputations grow with time, Bruce suffered as tastes changed. By the 70s, after pornography became prevalent and openly sold through the mail, Bruce found his reputation diminishing and his income plummeting. His health failed him, too. A diabetic, he died of a heart attack in 1974 while on the road in Canada. He was traveling with his live-in companion, one of his favorite models. But Bruce of Los Angeles left behind a remarkable legacy that encapsulates a unique period in American history just as it evokes themes from the Classical Age. While he never achieved the recognition or respect he certainly would have working today, Bruce of Los Angeles left his mark in the style of many contemporary fashion photographers like Ken Haak, Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber and artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Duane Michaels. With a smile and perhaps a twinge of desire, we gaze at his colorful cast of characters, and marvel at his uncanny gift for glorifying the American male.