Denny Denfield

Denny Denfield (1920-1995) was one of the great nude photographers of the Golden Age of Physique Photography.  But more than that, he was also a technological pioneer in gay smut.  In the 1950's, Mr. Denfield was an amateur  photographer in California with a job as an accountant for the U.S. Army.   Denny (illegally) captured thousands of handsome and muscular men in the nude with his Stereo Realist Camera. Stereography had actually been invented back in 1850, but it took the advent of a compact, easy-to-use 3-D camera in 1947 for amateurs like Denfield to afford producing their own images. This type of 3D smut was already being shot in bedrooms and garages of straight men photographing ladies with big breasts who needed to pay the rent, but Denny was unique in that he focused his three-lens camera on men.  Denfield took nude stereo photos of friends, professional physique models, navy guys from the local port, and lots of strangers that he met and persuaded into striping naked (often at the beach). 

Part of the appeal of his private portfolio work (not published by Denny himself) is that these men are often literally captured as they were living, in all their un-model glory. Denny also freelanced for studios such, like Western Models Guild, where he worked with professional models as well.  Without a doubt, Denny also had a persuasive personality and was able to both flatter the ego and simultaneously disarm any hesitations his models may have had. Denfield lore has it that he actually talked four sailor buddies he once approached into flexing and posing.  It has to be mentioned again that, even as consenting adults, men who posed nude for photography risked going to prison along with the photographer.

Thanks to David Chapman, from whose own private collection many of Denny's photographs now are available to the public, his nude stereos give us a special view of what's a very treasured time in gay media history.

His photographs were never distributed on any large level, given their illegality at the time.  His Kodachrome color photos are among the best of the era.  By the time male nude photographs became legal in 1967, he had stopped working.