WORDS: JAMES KLEINMANN
Tom of Finland is celebrated for his distinctive, erotically charged drawings of hyper-masculine, impossibly muscular and well-endowed men — often wearing leather boots or suggestive uniforms. Born in 1920, he lived out his sexual fantasies on paper, creating much of his work in an age when gay sex was still illegal.
Well before the internet made porn readily available, these “Masc 4 Masc” images. published in physique magazines from the 1950s onwards, both aroused and influenced gay men’s self-image, fanning the flames of the gay liberation movement.