Alair Gomes

This book is the first to feature the work of the Brazilian photographer Alair de Oliveira Gomes (1921-1992). A philosopher, art critic, and university professor, he was in his fifties when he began to develop a body of photographic work that focused almost exclusively on athletic young men on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. This tireless collector of books, pictures, and films transformed the thousands of pages of his diaries into an immense erotic tableau of black-and-white photographs devoted to the beauty of the male physique. Photographs covertly taken on the beach, or with a telephoto zoom lens from the window of his apartment, were extensively reworked and ordered in carefully constructed sequences. This group of photographs, now preserved at the National Library of Rio, constitutes one of the most original photographic works of the last thirty years. 150 illustrations.