Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual

Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual

<p><strong>Peter Berlin revolutionized the landscape of gay male eroticism in the tradition of Tom of Finland</strong></p><p>Peter Berlin was a self-created icon. With his trademark pageboy haircut and his skin-tight costumes that put every detail of his anatomy on display (designed and tailored by Berlin himself to accentuate his already naturally defined physique), he became a gay sex symbol and a walking work of art.<br>Cruising was his career, and with a background in photography, Berlin began taking thousands of erotic self-portraits in the parks, train stations and streets of Berlin, Rome, Paris, New York and San Francisco, where he settled in the early 1970s. As Berlin put it, “One day I looked at a camera and said, ‘I have found my dream lover.’”<br>Berlin’s ’70s and ’80s self-portrait photography graced the covers of gay magazines, defining a look and a reimagined masculinity in a changing gay male culture. Spotlighting Berlin’s significant body of work alongside images by Tom of Finland, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol, <I>Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual</I> pays tribute to the man who revolutionized the landscape of gay male eroticism and became an international sensation. The book is designed by Omar Sosa, Creative Director of <I>Apartamento</I> magazine, and is edited by Michael Bullock, writer and publisher of <I>BUTT</I>, <I>Pin-Up</I>, <I>Fantastic Man</I> and <I>Gentlewoman</I> magazines. Carl Swanson, Editor-at-Large for <I>New York Magazine</I>, contributes a biographical text.<br>Artist, model and filmmaker <B>Peter Berlin</B>, nee Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen Huene (born 1942), created some of the most legendary erotic imagery of his day. What began as studies in self-portraiture and fashion design in the name of cruising, by the early 1970s had turned into a robust artistic practice that included the creation of two films―<I>Nights in Black Leather</I> (1973) and <I>That Boy</I> (1974)―and innumerable photographs, paintings and illustrations.</p>