BOOKS of INTEREST

A wonderful photo book with Lon's images sorted by decade and reproduced with absolute beauty. Not enough Johnny Kemper but there never is. Unlike the Janssen book which had a picture of Lon that wasn't, this has some beautiful shots of him. An absolute must for those who loved Alonzo James Hanagan. The book was assembled by an aspiring author who, during the last months of Lon's life, rented  a room in Lon's vast apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.

Wally Kundzicz took the bull by the horns & put together a tribute to himself using scans of small prints he had, Bravo! Despite his sometimes faulty memory, the nearly 80 year old photographer recalls his by-gone days of glory and documents his important place in the history of physique photography.  His triumphs in court helped to end postal tyranny and did much to pave the way for today's Gay press.  The book may be small, but the quality of the printing is outstanding.  The size of the book is evocative of the Golden Age of physique photography, when prints and magazines were small format only, so that they would fit easily into a man's jacket pocket.  Those were the days when we all lived in a backward, homophobic society in which the revelation that a man was Gay almost always resulted in the loss of his job and his home and his ostracization by his family and by "main stream" society.... or worse.  The appropriately small size of the book recalls those anxious and repressive times, and is a good size to pop into a briefcase.
Wally's book also is a gift of great value to Man-Age Press, the owner of Champion Studios.  According to the grapevine, "Champion" has been serving as a de facto catalogue;  numerous orders for prints have been placed as a result of the publication of Wally's photographic trip down memory lane.  Some words of warning, however:  Wally's memory failed him from time to time, and he got some of the model's names wrong.  (Who can blame him?  All of those hunks would blow anybody's mind.)  If you're interested in buying prints, just pop over to the official Champion Studios web site, and you will find images of all of the models, with their correct names.