Category: gay photography

Maskulo

Maskulo

Maskulo, founded in 2014,  is an openly gay-owned and gay-oreinted festish gear company for men. They design, manufacture and ship their creations worldwide. Their gear, made of neoprene, lycra, latex and spandex, are available in  a wide range of articles, including leggings, wrestling singlets, shorts, t-shirts, tank tops, jockstraps, boxer briefs, and other accessories.

Maskulo was founded by Artem Smyslov and Bulat Barantaev who both support democratic movements in Russia, with emphasis on support for gay movements. These incllude the Russian democratic “Solidarnost” movement, the civil movement “Za Prava Cheloveka” (Movement for Human Rights), and GORD ( Movement for Gays, Relatives, and Friends).

Reblogged with thanks to http://fotofanisback.tumblr.com

Calendar: November 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of November

The Homestead Fire

November 10, 1889 was the birthdate of British actor Claude Rains.

William Claude Rains was a British film and stage actor known for his smooth, distinguished voice; polished, ironic style; and intelligent portrayal of a variety of roles, ranging from villains to sympathetic gentlemen. He began his acting career at the age of eleven working backstage jobs before making his adult stage debut. He enjoyed a successful stage career in London and taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts; two of his students were John Gielgud and Charles Laughton.

Claude Rains toured the United States in the 1926 play “The Constant Nymph” and made a name for himself on Broadway. He came relatively late in his career to film acting and, while working for the Theater Guild in New York City, was given a screen test for a role in the 1932 “A Bill of Divorcement” by RKO. Rains did not get that role but was cast in the title role, partly because of his voice, in James Whale’s 1933 “The Invisible Man”. Although Rains’s face is hidden behind bandages throughout most of the film, his ominous voice effectively reflects the heightening madness of the megalomaniacal scientist he portrays.

Claude Rains went on to play a variety of leading and supporting roles, including criminals, aristocrats, politicians, spies, learned professionals, and family men, all with equal charm and finesse. He displayed great chemistry with Bette Davis as her sympathetic psychiatrist in the 1942 “Now, Voyager” and as her patient, loving husband in the 1944 “Mr. Skeffington”, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Rains was also nominated for Oscars as best supporting actor for his work in three much-loved American film classics: as the corrupt senator in the 1939 “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” by Frank Capra; as the charming, opportunistic police chief in the 1942 “Casablanca”, one of his most famous roles; and as the likable, sensitive Nazi agent in love with costar Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 “Notorious”.

In 1951 Claude Rains won a Tony Award for his lead role in the play “Darkness at Noon”. He was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in his career: “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”, “Casablanca”, “Mr. Skeffington”, and “Notorious”. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Claude Rains in Costume as Kees Popings”, 1952, “The Man Who Watched Trains Go By”, Vintage Photo, 20 x 25 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Arthur Edeson, “Claude Rains as Captain Louis Renault”, 1942, “Casablanca”, Film Shot, Director Michael Curtiz

Travis Chantar: Photo Shoot of Martin Gregory Jerez

Travis Chantar, “Red Lignt, Green Light”, Photo Shoot of Martin Gregory Jerez

Travis Chantar is a Brooklynn based artist, originally from the mountains of Idaho. Since moving to New York in 2014, Chantar has made a living as a freelance photographer snapping pics of a wide variety of creatives from actors, dancers and musicians to other photographers.

Reblogged with thanks to http://regalpourlesyeux.tumblr.com

Calendar: November 9

A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of November

An Autumn Afternoon

November 9, 1980 marks the passing of character actor Victor Sen Yung.

Victor Sen Yung , born Sen Yew Cheung, was born in San Francisco to parents who were both immigrants from China. After his mother died in the great flu epidemic of 1919, he and his younger sister were placed in a children’s shelter by their father, who returned to China seeking a new wife. Upon his father’s and his new wife’s return, the family again reunited as a household.

Sen Yung made his first significant acting debut in the 1938 “Charlie Chan in Honolulu”, as the detective’s ‘number two son”, Jimmy Chan. In this movie, Sidney Toler had his first role as Charlie Chan, replacing the recently deceased Warner Oland; Sen Yung replaced Oland’s ‘number one son’ Lee, who had been played by actor Keye Luke. Sen Yung played his Jimmy Chan role for ten “Charlie Chan” films from 1938 to 1942.

In 1940 Victor Sen Yung played the crucial role of the lawyer’s clerk Ong Chi Seng in the Bette Davis film “The Letter”, a film noir murder story. Like other Chinese-American actors, he was cast in Japanese roles during World War II, appearing as a traitor in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart film “Across the Pacific”. After enlisting in the Army Air Force, Sen Yung’s military service included training films and a role in the Army Air Force play and film “Winged Victory”.

After the war, Victor Sen Yung resumed his Hollywood career, appearing in the final two of Sidney Toler’s  Charlie Chan films, “Shadows Over Chinatown” and “The Trap”. Following Toler’s death in 1947, Sen Yung continued in films but also appeared on television, most notably as Hop Sing, the cook on the long-running “Bonanza” western series, appearing in 102 episodes during its fourteen year run.

An accomplished and talented cook, Sen Yung frequently appeared on cooking programs and authored “The Great Wok Cookbook” in 1974.

Victor Sen Yung died under unusual circumstances at his North Hollywood home in 1980. A creative ceramic artist with a small business, he died of natural gas poisoning from a gas leak while creating clayware and curing the items in an oven. After an investigation, the authorities ultimately ruled the death an accident. A memorial scholarship is awarded each year at his alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. Victor Sen Yung’s eulogy was given by fellow “Bonanza” actor Pernell Roberts, who also paid the funeral expenses.

Multi-Colored

Photographer Unknown, (A Multi-Colored Universe)

“Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8 color boxes, but what you’re really looking for are the 64 color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64 color box, though I’ve got a few missing. It’s okay though, because I’ve got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8 color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation.” – John Mayer

Calendar: November 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of November

The Diamond Seal of Approval

November 8, 1847 was the birthdate of Irish author Bram Stoker.

Born in Clontarf, County Dublin, Ireland, Bram Stoker was an invalid in early childhood; he could not stand or walk until he was seven. Stoker outgrew his weakness to become an outstanding athlete and soccer player at Trinity College in Dublin, where he earned a degree in mathematics. He was employed for ten years in the civil service at Dublin Castle, during which he was also an unpaid drama critic for the Dublin Evening Mail.

Stoker made the acquaintance of his idol, the actor Sir Henry Irving, in 1878 and, until Irving’s death twenty-seven years later, Stoker acted as his manager,  accompanying him on his American tours. Bram Stoker also managed the business of the Lyceum Theater which Irving owned.

While acting as Irving’s manager, Bram Stoker was writing his first book. His “The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland”, a handbook in legal administration, was published in 1879. Turning to fiction late in life, Stoker published his first novel, “The Snake’s Pass”, a romantic thriller with a bleak western Ireland setting, in 1890.

Stoker was a deeply private man with an intense adorations of Henry Irving, Walt Whitman and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, leading to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed gay man who used his fiction as a possible outlet for his frustrations. Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar’s trials generated, Stoker began writing “Dracula” only weeks after Wilde’s conviction.

His masterpiece, “Dracula”, appeared in 1897. The novel is written chiefly in the form of diaries and journals kept by the principal characters: Jonathan Harker, who made the first contact with the vampire Count Dracula; Wilhelmina Murray, Jonathan’s eventual wife; Dr. John “Jack” Seward, a psychiatrist and sanatorium administrator; and Lucy Westenra, Mina’s friend and a victim of Dracula who herself becomes a vampire.

The story is that of a Transylvanian vampire who, using supernatural powers, makes his way to England and victimizes innocent people there to gain the blood on which he survives. Led by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Seward’s mentor and an expert on “obscure diseases”, Harker and his friends are at last able to overpower and destroy Dracula. The immensely popular novel enjoyed equal success in several versions as a play and later as a film.

Oscar Wilde: “Coloured Like Flame is His Body”

 

Photographers Unknown, Beguiling the Senses and Enchanting the Mind: Photo Set Six

“Be happy, cried the Nightingale, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense.”

–Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose

Calendar: November 7

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of November

Fervor Doubled

On November 7, 1492, the Ensisheim Meteorite strikes a wheat field in Alsace, France.

Shortly before noon on November 7, 1492, a meteorite fell in a field just outside the walled city of Ensisheim in Alsace, France. The fall of the meteorite through the Earth’s atmosphere was observed as a fireball at a distance of up to 150 kilometres from where it eventually landed. The only witness was a young boy who saw the single stone punch itself a meter deep into what is now the rich soil of the eastern French countryside. It is the oldest meteorite impact with a confirmed date on record, and has become famous for its dramatic fall from the heavens, recorded for posterity by the Italian priest Sigismondo Tizio.

In an age when comets, shooting stars, and other celestial phenomenon remained unexplained, the appearance of the meteorite was quickly attributed to divine intervention. When the citizens of Ensisheim learned of the fall, many people wanted their own souvenir of the event in the form a fragment chipped from the main mass. As the crowds descended on the stone, the Chief Magistrate took charge and stopped further destruction. The stone was set at the door of the Ensisheim church where its fame was soon magnified.

On November 26th, the “King of the Romans” King Maximilian arrived in Ensisheim to consult privately with the stone. Several days later, Maximilian declared the meteorite to be a wonder of God, and then chipped off two small pieces of the stone, one for himself and one for his friend Archduke Sigismund of Austria. King Maximilian gave the stone back to the citizens of Ensisheim stating that it should be preserved in the parish church as evidence of God’s miracles. The meteorite was fixed to the church wall with iron crampons “to prevent it from wandering at night or departing in the same violent manner it had arrived” .

Today, the Ensisheim meteorite resides on display at the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence in Ensisheim. It is now protected in the town; but over centuries,  visitors managed to chip off about 56 kg (123 pounds) of its original 127-kg mass. The Ensisheim meteorite is classified as an ordinary chondrite, the most abundant meteorite class, constituting more than 85 percent of meteorite falls.

Sebastian Brant, satirist and author of “Das Narrenschiff”, described the meteorite and its fall in the poem “Loose Leaves Concerning the Fall of the Meteorite”. Brant created broadsheets in Latin and German with a poem about the meteorite describing it as an omen. On the reverse side of Albrecht Dürer’s 1495 painting “Saint Jerome in the Wilderness” is an image of what appears to be a meteor/meteorite. It has been suggested that this might be the Ensisheim Meteorite.