The Good-looking Cowboys Who Caught Bruce of Los Angeles’s Eye

The cowboy has been an object of homoerotic fascination for so long as he has been a traditional masculine archetype: the queer eye was all the time going to be drawn to a good-looking man in chaps. This barely subversive frisson lights up Bruce of Los Angeles: Rodeo, a brand new exhibition of classic photos by the late grandfather of physique pictures, which opens this week at Acne Paper Palais Royal in Paris. From round 1950 till his dying in 1974, the person born Bruce Bellas made common journeys to rodeos throughout North America, the place he would wrangle competing cowboys for impromptu picture shoots. The outcomes harnessed the queer enchantment of cowboy iconography lengthy earlier than the Village People, Brokeback Mountain or the frisky discography of homosexual nation singer Orville Peck. 

Bruce is greatest identified for his rigorously composed physique pictures, which has influenced the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritts. Even his photos containing full-frontal nudity are inclined to have a playful or campy high quality: he’d snap a muscular mannequin posing like an historical Greek athlete or frolicking with one other by the pool. But the brand new exhibition’s curator, Vince Aletti, the New York-based pictures critic and collector, believes his rodeo portraits present a “different side to Bruce from the almost classical Hollywood glamour of his male nudes”. In these photographs, Bruce’s subjects are considerably more clothed – most wear jeans, long sleeve shirts and a classic cowboy hat – and his compositions are less stylised. Many of his subjects are posing in front of simple gates or wooden fences, almost as if they’re taking a break while their horses fuel up on hay. “They show that Bruce was also really good at capturing casual, charming portraits on the run,” Aletti says. “Clearly, he got the cowboys to pose for him, but they aren’t doing any kind of exaggerated poses. To me, these pictures just feel really comfortable.” One of Bruce’s clean-cut cowboys is casually holding a lasso as he leans towards a tree, whereas one other nuzzles a stallion’s nostril, one hand on his hip. Invariably, Bruce’s rodeo topics challenge a relaxed virility that provides the brightly lit, black-and-white photos a luminous erotic cost. 

In complete, the exhibition options 77 rodeo images, however Aletti reckons he has not less than 150 extra of Bruce’s cowboy portraits in his private assortment. “I doubt there were that many unattractive cowboys at the rodeos, but he certainly knew how to pick a handsome guy,” the curator says. “What struck me was the different ages [of his subjects]. There are some younger kids who were probably just breaking into the scene, and there’s some older guys that you look at and think: ‘This wasn’t his first rodeo’.” Aletti means that Bruce, who labored as a chemistry instructor in Nebraska earlier than shifting to Los Angeles to pursue a pictures profession, “probably just really enjoyed seeing these guys off duty.” Shooting them would absolutely have felt extra relaxed than his day job as a physique photographer, which concerned strolling a positive line always. Like all so-called “beefcake photos” of the early and mid-Twentieth century, Bruce’s photos had been ostensibly a celebration of male athleticism, however really fed a rising urge for food for homoerotic eye sweet. For most of Bruce’s lifetime, expressions of queer male need had been taboo and even unlawful: in 1962, Illinois turned the primary US state to decriminalise sexual relations between males. 

Though occasions had been altering, Bruce would have wanted to be extremely cautious when he requested males working within the hyper-masculine rodeo surroundings to pose for him. “I can only presume that he really had the gift of the gab,” says Calgary Gay History Project’s Kevin Allen, who grew up attending the Calgary Stampede in Alberta, Canada, certainly one of Bruce’s favorite rodeos. “Calgary had a nascent queer community at that time – there were a couple of gay bars where Bruce could have made connections – but it was also a very closeted place. And like the UK and most of North America at that time, there would have been legal repercussions for anyone who was [found to be] a ‘known homosexual’.” Both Aletti and Allen consider that when Bruce arrived at a rodeo, he would have used the sleek social abilities he honed whereas lensing male bodybuilders in California. “He had experience of working with men who weren’t necessarily used to taking their clothes off for the camera,” Aletti says, “and you can really see in these pictures how he could also put cowboys at ease.” Indeed, his rodeo topics’ beaming smiles are considerably revealing. 

Still, as joyful as the brand new exhibition could really feel, it additionally comes with what organisers describe as a “poignant coda.” In July 1974, whereas visiting a rodeo in Banff, Alberta, Bruce suffered a large coronary heart assault that lower his life quick in his mid-60s. “I feel in a way that he died in the saddle,” Aletti says – one other satisfying pun – “and it feels like a nice memorial that he went out doing something that he loved.” For Aletti, Bruce’s apposite sign-off solely provides to the work’s distinctive and enduring enchantment, an intoxicating mix of the healthful and the erotic. “Here’s a group of amazing-looking guys, all photographed with Bruce’s skill and sensitivity, who aren’t trying to push their beauty on you in any way. They’re just making themselves available for our appreciation,” he says. “It’s hard not to see something kind of sweet and charming in that.”

Bruce of Los Angeles: Rodeo is at Acne Paper Palais Royal, Paris from 3 September to 7 October 2026.