The Pleasure of His Company

Male Togetherness in Found Photographs: Vintage Photographs from the Collection of John Ibson
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-956313-56-7
Verlag: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rit Press

Buch, Englisch, 168 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 216 mm x 279 mm, Gewicht: 821 g

A photo may capture a moment in cultural time-literally mirroring beliefs, assumptions, conventions, and notions of behaviors acceptable and scorned. The 385 photographs in this book are just such mirrors. Two decades ago, John Ibson, a historian of masculinity's history in the United States and of the variety of male relationships, used that approach to photography to examine shifting meanings of American manhood in his influential book Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography. Now, in The Pleasure of His Company, John Ibson opens his vast collection of everyday photographs of males together once again. Ibson believes these photos, all published here for the first time, take us to a world of unselfconscious affection among American men, a world largely lost today. It is a world, he maintains, whose loss contributed to the toxic masculinity so much lamented today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ibson, John

Weitere Mitwirkende

Harrison, Steve

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie Fotografie: Geschichte und Sammlungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie Besondere Themen und Arten der Fotografie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

"INTRODUCTION
Finding Photographs 1
CHAPTER 1.
All These Friends and Lovers: Male Couples in Found Photographs 17
CHAPTER 2.
My Guys: Groups of Men 53
CHAPTER 3.
Brothers in Arms: Military Photographs 69
CHAPTER 4.
Acting for the Camera: Male Performance in Photographs 97
CHAPTER 5.
Preserving the Special Occasions: Males at Work and Play 119
5A. Found Photographs of American Boyhood 122
5B. The Team Photo and American Masculinity 126
5C. Men at Work: The Occupational Photograph 130
5D. Members Only: Photographs of Male Organizations 132
5E. Male Space in the Sand: Boys at the Beach 134
EPILOGUE
The Value of This Collection 139
AFTERWORD
What This Collection Means to Me 141
Steve Harrison
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 145
INDEX TO THE PHOTOGRAPHS 147
INDEX 157"

Über Autor(innen)

Ibson, John
An award-winning teacher and a prominent scholar of American sexuality and masculinity, John Ibson is a professor emeritus of American studies at California State University, Fullerton, his academic home throughout a career of nearly fifty years. Among his books are Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography (2006) and The Mourning After: Loss and Longing among Midcentury American Men (2018). He lives in Claremont, California, with his husband, Steve Harrison, and their dachshund, Max.