LEATHER!

Compiled Under the Direction of Avery Willard. Published by Guild Press LTD., Washington, D.C., 1965, first edition. Original illustrated textured wraps, side staple bound, 8.5" x 5.25", 72 pages, illustrated with 64 pages of black and white homoerotic photographs featuring leather, whips, chains, rope, and motorcycles. NEAR FINE CONDITION: tight, bright, clean and unmarked. Scarce, just 9 copies in OCLC collections worldwide.

"Men of Leather," was the first American gay male manifesto of leather Identity, a defining four page essay on leather subculture followed by an archetypal collection of photographs from the 1950s and 1960s from six studios, Chuck Renslow's Kris Studio of Chicago, Avery Willard of New York, Bob Anthony of New York, Scott of London, David of Cleveland, and R. A. Enterprises. Guild Press was a pioneering homomasculine publisher of gay oriented physique magazines in the 1950s. In 1962 Guild won an important legal victory to distribute publications with gay erotic content.

Avery Willard (aka Bruce King) 1921-1999, provocative and groundbreaking New York City artist, photographer, experimental filmmaker, writer, publisher, leatherman, actor, pornographer, publisher, drag historian and gay rights activist. In 1967 he created the classic gay film "Leather Narcissus" starring New York leather icon Fernando, following the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village in 1968, under the pen name Bruce King, Willard published "Gay Scene" until 1992. A trailblazer of the queer art movement, Willard produced a lifetime of historically significant work that has remained widely unseen for decades.