Gay Male Eroticisim in Film and Photography From Their Beginnings to Stonewall

The groundbreaking and influential Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism and Photography and Film from their Beginnings to Stonewall is coming to its 25th anniversary. I talk to Tom Waugh to ask about the intellectual and social context in which the research took place, the methods developed to produce it, the way materials were gathered, who was interviewed, the many barriers to its publication, how the book was received then and why it continues to be so influential now. The video contains images from the book and other sources to illustrate the discussion which albeit vintage are nonetheless explicit. One of the struggles of the book, and one of its glories, was to publish such images in a scholarly context.