John Palatinus

John Palatinus (1929-2014) took his first physique photo in 1951 in his own living room in Indiana. Palatinus crafted his own photographic style which was recognizable by his use of light and minimal background. The pictures echoed Palatinus' influences, who included Horst P Horst and George Platt Lynes, while documenting a sub-culture of body perfection and hyper-masculinity that emerged in the post-war era. His photographs were published in numerous bodybuilding magazines of the era, most notably Tomorrow's Man, a pocket-sized publication featuring males with posing straps or other coverings for their privates. At various times, Palatinus operated as Courtny Studio (sometimes misspelled Country), General Photo, and Rainbow Photo Studio, and perhaps others.

In 1954 Palatinus moved to New York, and set up on West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, taking male physique photographs and distributing them to eager collectors. He continued to be featured in Tomorrow's Man and did a thriving mail-order business, selling his photographs nationwide. In 1958, Palatinus started shooting and selling full-frontal nude photos through the mail. This proved to be an unfortunate move. His studio was raided by the US Postal Inspectors in cooperation with the New York Police Department and all of his photographs, original negatives, cameras and equipment were confiscated, never to be returned. Palatinus was very effectively put out of business. After a trial, he was convicted not of distribution of so-called pornography, but of conspiracy, a misdemeanor charge, and spent no time in jail.

Palantinus' story mirrors that of almost every beefcake photographer in the 1940s and 1950s: A brief period of flourishment, ended by raids, destruction of photographic equipment and negatives, criminal proceedings and financial ruin, sometimes - as was the case with Fredrick Kovert (Kovert of Hollywood) and Alonzo James Hanagan (Lon of New York) - accompanied by brutal beatings by the raiding policemen. When he died in 2014, Palatinus was the last living beefcake photographer active during the 1950s. He, unlike many of others, lived long enough to see his once vilified work redeemed as art.