Works in Exhibition:

Dick Powers
Photograph
13 x 19”
1957
Edition 1 of 25
(Close-up and gallery view; top right)

Jimmy Hale
Photograph
13 x 19”
1957
Edition 1 of 25
(Gallery view; bottom right)

Ken Martin
Photograph
13 x 19”
1958
Edition 1 of 25
(Gallery view; top left)

John Palatinus Arrest
News clipping
11 x 14”
(Gallery view; bottom left)

From 1955 to 1959 I was physique photographer in South Bend, Indiana and New York City.    My images were featured in Tomorrow's Man and Grechian Guild and reviewed in Physique Pictorial magazine.  It was the era of McCarthyism and a very oppressive time for homosexuals in America.  I decided to ignore government censorship and take nude portraits.  The US Postal Dept. considered my work pornography.  They raided my New York studio confiscating all my photographs, negatives, cameras, lights and equipment effectively putting me out of business.

In 2009 photography collector Alan Harmon posted three Palatinus images on-line at v-m-p vintage male physique and asked if the artist was still alive. Alan never expected to receive an e-mail from the artist, nor to learn that he resided only a few miles away!  Upon learning about the circumstances in which Palatinus had lost all of his work, Harmon decided he had to remedy that situation.  At their first meeting, Harmon presented to Palatinus a small group of printouts of photos positively identified over the years as being by the artist.  Later, with the aid of his e-mail compatriots, Harmon was able to compile a nearly complete set of index prints, providing the names and faces for most of Palatinus? models.  Using these to search through the ?unknowns? in his collection, Harmon was able to pull out about 80 more images and give them back their names.  From a physique pay-site he was able to compile all of the known magazine pages featuring Palatinus? work.  At their next meeting a few months later, Palatinus was presented with a box of several hundred pages of photo and magazine scans, comprising the most complete set possible of the artist?s images that have been traded over the internet.  That collection continues to grow as new images are still being discovered.

Now over 50 years after the fact, through the magic of the Internet and discerning collectors, my photographs from what is now considered "the golden age of physique photography" once again have come to light.  At the age of 80 I am probably now the only living photographer from that period.  In February of 2010 my vintage images were exhibited for the first time at the Antebellum gallery in Los Angeles.

- John Palatinus