ABSTRACT
Gay male pornography serves both as cultural document and erotic tool. To more clearly understand gay pornography in its current manifestation, it is helpful to briefly note the extensive history of homoerotic images and gay sexual representation in the arts and media. Male homosexual pornography has apparently existed as long as heterosexual pornography. The most explicit representations of the homosexual, or merely homoerotic, male appear with the invention of photography in 1839 by Louis Daguerre. Homoerotic underground filmmaking documents an interesting psychological transition in the gay male communities. Gay filmmakers were still searching for a distinct filmic language with which to present their newly gained freedom of sexual expression. The history of gay male pornography is fascinating in its wherewithal and complex in its chronology and breadth of homosexual imagery. Perhaps soon there will exist an expansive text which exhaustively time-lines the subject.
