Unknown Artist
Among the many momentous social transformations generated by photography's invention was the possibility of self-representation by a large variety of groups previously excluded from official portraiture. Seamstresses, carpenters, gold miners, and even the recently deceased sat for their official portraits, leaving behind an extremely valuable record of their anonymous, if not invisible, lives.
This portrait shows two young men in a tender embrace, their thighs entwined, sharing a suggestive moment before the camera. Are they lovers? Perhaps, but more likely this photograph is an example of the natural and unselfconscious intimacy and physical contact that men enjoyed in a pre-Freudian era.
Text: Metropolitan Museum of Art