history of male nude photography 181

French artist Raymond Carrance, Carrance was a photographer and book illustrator who, working mostly in the 1950's and 60's, created a private body of homoerotic dreamscape's under the pseudonym ‘Czanara’. One of the last great unknown erotic artists of the 20th century, his work is somewhat reminiscent of the magic realism style of the painters Paul Cadmus and Jared French, yet done in a photographic medium. Using overlays of abstract graphics over dreamy images of languid young men at play, his work is a meditative pondering of the artist's psyche. The work is reverential, distinctly European, yet never exploitative.  Carrance, who lived from 1921 - 1998, was also responsible for illustrating with elaborate etchings and lithographs the works of Jules Renard and Cyrano de Bergerac. (See also here).