Faces & Places

To the untrained eye, FH is all about hot bodies and body parts.  Sure, the site's focus is clearly the male form, but early into working on the site, I knew it was about more.  I've written many times about how the web is full of hot bodies.  Thousands of Twitter pages, Instagram's, tumblrs and sites full of millions of images of bodies, butts, pecs and penis's. 

So many body parts in face, the more you look at them, the more they all look the same.  I know everyone reading this has scrolled through pages of photos of hot men, rarely stopping to actually take a close look.  It's kind of of like the current state of television.  Hundreds of channels, and still nothing on.  I swear I paid more attention to TV when I only had handful of channels.

FH is full of great looking men, with eye-catching bodies, but when I'm drawn to an image, an image that has me stop in my tracks, it's rarely about a front or a backside, more often than not, it's about a face or a place.  A great smile, a fun facial expression, eyes that dance or have the ability to lure you in.

It's also about places and spaces.  A great image of a model in a great studio space or a beautiful location.  I especially love images of the male form in spectacular locations around the world, places I dream and fantasize about visiting one day.

It's about about places in time.  Long gone eras when photographing the male form was risky, even dangerous.  Times when you couldn't right click and save a shot of a hot nude model, times when you had to go out, pick up that book or magazine, and face the judging eyes of the old lady or man behind the counter of the magazine, drug or department store.

Times when photographers couldn't look for models on-line, but hat do either put discrete ads in magazines or newspapers or take the risk of approaching strange men at the gym or the park and ask if they'd like to model.  If they showed any interest at all, you'd wait for just the right moment to ask if they'd pose in the nude.

All of these elements came together earlier this month.  I was searching for vintage shots of veterans for my post commemorating November 11th. (HERE:)  On one of the pages I found myself on, there was an image of man with such a striking face.  He had great facial structure, a beautiful, distinctive nose, and an incredibly infectious smile.  His body was incredible, but it was face that had me stop, and want to know more.

The face, after doing an image search, belonged to model and actor Richard Dubois.  The place, was Hollywood in the 1950's.  The model and bodybuilder was born in 1933 and his passion for fitness led to two number one placements in the Mister America contest.  It was through his bodybuilding that led to him being seen by photographer Bob Mizer.

Mizer quickly saw how special Dubois was and quickly put him under contract with the Athletic Model Guild. Thanks to his work with AMG, others took notice, including Hollywood.  Dubois never really became a successful actor, but was cast in a few projects, most notably, the 1954 Debbie Reynolds film Athena. 

Athena (1954)

Above: Richard with Steve Reeves in 1954's Athena.  Below, Richard and Steve with Athena star Debbie Reynolds.

I have no idea who posted that one uncredited shot of Dubois on a form that initially drew me in. I  thank them though, for introducing me to the face, and his place in the image history of the male form.