The Best of 'Bruce' (A Strictly Limited Edition)
One of only 200 copies of a numbered edition of a "Best of Bruce" compilation of male nude photography by Bruce Bellas, known as Bruce of Los Angeles. This copy number 182, and initialed "JB" near the numbering, assumed to be editor John Barrington.
Featuring the fully nude male photos from the later years, largely 1968 and after. Prior to those years physique models were usually photographed semi-nude with strategically placed towels or other objects, or wearing small loin cloths.
Bruce Bellas took on the moniker Bruce of Los Angeles, shooting male physique and bodybuilder photographs, working for the magazines of male physique photos that began appearing in the 1940s-'50s, often with homoerotic allure. He eventually set up his own studio in his garage photographing male models and creating a personal style of eroticism combined with Midwestern wholesomeness. Bellas died while traveling in Canada in 1974.
Published in 1975, just a year after Bellas' death, his collaborator and associate, Kurt Deitrick, continued distributing and selling Bellas' archive of thousands of photographs. Deitrick produced and sold these prints using Kensington Road (or Kensington Road Studio) as the studio brand name.
Edited by John S. Barrington (1920–1991), the British physique photographer and publisher. Barrington's photos of nude or semi-nude men appeared widely in British and American physique magazines. He was a colleague and contemporary of Bellas'.
A rare item - no copies found online at the time of this listing, no auction results found, and only one copy in Worldcat/OCLC. Item #2159.
Condition: Very Good, light edgewear to covers and rubbing along spine; lower right corner dent.
Price: $550.00