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Hard to Imagine is the first work to chronicle in detail the evolution of gay male erotic image culture, from the canonical works of "art" cinema and photography to the private and often highly explicit productions of amateurs. In this visual history of homoerotic image-making in its first century, Thomas Waugh brings together nearly four hundred photographs and film stills, from archives and personal collections in Europe and North America. Waugh identifies four primary aspects of homoerotic photography and film - the artistic, the commercial, the illicit, and the politico-scientific - tracing their development against a background of advances in visual technology. This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the visual imagery in addition to its production, circulation, and consumption. A pathbreaking examination of the interplay between gay film and photography, gay life, and the larger social and political world, Hard to Imagine is a model for social and cultural historians. Interweaving an analysis of these images in their gay cultural context with the broader social and legal implications, Thomas Waugh offers a pioneering chapter in both gay and visual history.

"In this vast and valuable study, Waugh...has accumulated the most comprehensive study of gay erotic film and photography that will probably every be undertaken."

Library Journal

"The compilation of these images in one volume by Thomas Waugh...must be lauded; finding them demanded an extraordinary level of research in archives and private collections throughout North America and Europe....This distinguished monograph illuminating a century of male erotica merits eyeballing."

Bob Speziale, Lambda Book Report

Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall: Search Results