In the prevailing heteronormative culture, that often meant naked women for a male audience, but if you knew where to look, male nude photography was prevalent in subcultures too. Gay porn photographyįrom early adopters Louis Daguerre to William Fox Talbot and Oskar Barnack in the 19th and 20th centuries, photography came to the fore and like any technology, some of the earliest uses were erotic and/or pornographic.Īs with paintings, the nude form was one of the earliest to be captured and idealised. This is judging from everything from eroticised celebrations of were-they/weren’t they couple Achilles and Patroclus, to the explosion of queer art in the lead up to and after the (partial) decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK in 1967. Gay sex and gay sexuality has widely inspired art around the world, and sometimes there’s even crossover between the two, if you look at some swoonsome paintings and sculptures of Saint Francis of Assisi for instance.Īrt isn’t porn, but works steeped in homoeroticism are a clear influence and part of the history of porn. Swanky auction house Sotheby’s says that homosexuality “has been a perennial concern of artists since the beginning of art.” Of course, visual art isn’t porn – but it’d be disingenuous not to recognise the fuzzy line between the two throughout history and where historical art representations of the male form will have influenced later pornographic movements Related: This is why straight men watch gay porn
There were saucy close-up drawings of women’s bodies on cave walls at least 37,000 years ago.Īnd there are 3,000 year old artifacts from Ancient Egypt showing gay scenes, and even a 2,000-year-old gay sex cave painting by the San Bushmen in what is now fiercely homophobic Zimbabwe.
Scientists are largely in agreement that homosexuality has existed for as long as sexuality, and depictions of the male form in art have existed for tens of thousands of years. (Creative Commons) What was the first gay porn?