Page 250 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

230 Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.

Becoming visible men: American photographer Lou Thomas (right, with Gary Stone),
published a photograph of himself on the cover of his ’zine Boys in Leather #1 (1964) as a
“trial balloon” three years before he co-founded Colt Studio (1967) and his own Target
Studio (1974). Masculine-identified artists Lou Thomas, Chuck Renslow, Etienne, A. Jay,
Fred Halsted, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jack Fritscher led the real-time leather players
who created the photographs, writing, magazines, films, and books of early leather identity
of homomasculinity emerging as a legitimate category from the revolving closet door set
spinning by the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. To strengthen and darken Drummer which
was born blond in LA, Fritscher in San Francisco edited into Drummer a potent mix of
Renslow and Etienne’s Chicago leather values and Lou Thomas’ New York leather scene.
Lou Thomas shot many Drummer covers and centerfolds. Boys in Leather #1, featuring Lou
Thomas as “Nick D’Arti,” credited its photographs to Thomas’ “Leather Photography, PO
Box 352, New York,” and was published by Elgin Products, Los Angeles, with the Elgin
probably referencing the Elgin Marbles.
©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
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