Posted on April 6, 2014
The Steven Kasher Gallery will feature works by Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux at The Association of International Photography Art Dealers’ annual photography show at the Park Avenue Armory, April 10th to 13th.
The AIPAD show is one of the most prestigious photography events in the world, and we are proud to have Fitzgerald represented there.
The Park Avenue Armory is located at 643 Park Avenue in New York, between 66th and 67th Streets.
For more information on AIPAD and its exhibitors, visit aipad.com.
And don’t miss Brooklyn Boys at the NY Photo Show, which is happening concurrently with AIPAD.
Category: Exhibitions Tagged: 1960s, AIPAD, Brooklyn Boys, Danny Fitzgerald, exhibition, fine art, Les Demi Dieux, Louis, New York, nudes, photographer, photography, Steven Kasher, vintage
Posted on December 3, 2013
This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from the biographical introduction to Brooklyn Boys, the new monograph on Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
In the early 1960s, Danny Fitzgerald and Richard Bennett also began promoting Fitzgerald’s photography under the studio name “Les Demi Dieux.” Working under an assumed name was not uncommon in the 1940s and ’50s when photographers were persecuted for their work. Bob Mizer had the Athletic Model Guild. Don Whitman, the Western Photography Guild. Bruce Bellas called himself “Bruce of Los Angeles,” and Douglas Juleff, “Douglas of Detroit.”
So, throughout the early ’60s, male nudes by Les Demi Dieux appeared regularly on the covers and pages of slickly designed Joe Weider publications like The Young Physique, Muscles a Go-Go, Demi Gods, and Era (the publisher’s compilation volume celebrating the best photographers of the 1960s). Les Demi Dieux photographs featured popular models like Bennett, Albanese, and Orest, and lent Weider’s publications a visual impact and artistic quality that surpassed the average male physique magazines of the period.
Posted on November 3, 2013
This is the third in a series of excerpts from the biographical introduction to Brooklyn Boys, the new monograph on Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
With the start of the 1960s, Fitzgerald met Richard Bennett, the man who would become his collaborator and life partner until Fitzgerald’s death in 2000. A chiseled, masculine beauty with the natural ability of a classic artistic poser, Bennett came to New York City from working-class Scranton, Pennsylvania, looking for acting and modeling gigs. He apparently pursued Fitzgerald himself, submitting his resume to Fitzgerald through an enthusiast in the Bronx who was familiar with the photographer’s aesthetic.
Category: Publication, Writing Tagged: 1960s, Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, Danny Fitzgerald, gay, Hector Ramon, Les Demi Dieux, LGBT, nudes, photographer, photography, Richard Bennett
Posted on October 28, 2013
This is part two in a series of excerpts from the biographical introduction to Brooklyn Boys, the new monograph on Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
Fitzgerald also looked beyond Brooklyn in the late 1950s when he began photographing the young men he met at Abe Goldberg’s gym, worlds away on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A small but fit man with his Hasselblad camera, Fitzgerald’s earliest models—Nestor, Orest, and Jerry Albanese—were aspiring bodybuilders 20 years his junior, from working class neighborhoods and families similar, but distant from his own. He met many of them at the gym, and earned their trust by asking their assistance with his own workout or partnering with them for training. In the process he impressed them with his knowledge of worldly literature and culture, as well as his ingratiating encouragement of their physical beauty, and a ten or fifty dollar bill slipped into the pocket of their chinos.
Category: Publication, Writing Tagged: 1960s, Abe Goldberg, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Boys, Danny Fitzgerald, fine art, Lon of New York, nudes, Orest, photographer
Posted on October 21, 2013
Brooklyn Boys, the first monograph volume of Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux’s photography, was released in October 2013 in Europe, to be released the following month in the United States. It features over 160 of Fitzgerald’s noteworthy photographs and a biographical introduction from 12 years of research. Excerpts from the intro will be presented on this website in several parts. This is the first.
The diffuse light inside the photographer’s parents’ home in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn illuminated a young man’s flesh differently than it did outside in broad daylight. On the street the sunlight was harsh. It blared like a delivery truck’s horn, sparked like a welding iron, crackled like a transistor radio on full volume. It matched the temper and bravado of the boys in their cars and on the basketball courts, at every moment proving its power to the neighborhood. But inside the photographer’s home, upstairs, where the young men removed their clothes, lit a cigarette and sat naked in a void between the pale wall and the photographer’s camera, the sun’s quiet illumination gave everything an honest focus, a sensual solitude. It poured through curtains of lace, airborne dust and fresh smoke, as it would through stained glass, providing the young men a silent retreat directed by a master of light and composition, and the photographer himself a focus for the many incongruities in his life between inside and out. In that space, the photographer created some of his most exquisite works of art.
Category: Publication, Writing Tagged: 1950s, 1960s, Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, Danny Fitzgerald, fine art, gay, Italian-American, Les Demi Dieux, LGBT, nudes, photographer, photography, queer, street gangs, youth
Posted on October 21, 2013
Danny Fitzgerald & Les Demi Dieux are now on Facebook!
“Like” us on Facebook to receive regular Facebook updates about publications and events.
Category: Social Media Tagged: 1960s, Brooklyn Boys, Danny Fitzgerald, Facebook, Les Demi Dieux, Like, photography
Posted on October 19, 2013
Richard Bennett was Danny Fitzgerald’s partner, both in business with their photography studio “Les Demi Dieux,” and in life for 40 years until Fitzgerald’s death in 2000.
This photograph was taken during one of their many travels together, and appears in the book Brooklyn Boys: Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
Order the book on Amazon.com.
Category: Images Tagged: 1960s, Danny Fitzgerald, Les Demi Dieux, photographer, Richard Bennett
Posted on October 19, 2013
This model was named Danny, and appears to have been a small fellow, with a long neck and square shoulders, vacillating from one frame to the next between tough, playful and gentle. He posed for Fitzgerald out on the street, on the basketball court, and in Fitzgerald’s home studio. Almost always shirtless in chinos. Almost always with a cigarette. The film roll is dated 1962.
This image appears in the book Brooklyn Boys: Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
Category: Images Tagged: 1960s, Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, photographer
Posted on October 19, 2013
Stef was a beautiful, blond athlete, whose father accompanied son on all of Danny Fitzgerald’s photo sessions. Amazing images of Stef on the Brooklyn playgrounds and in the woods were very popular in the physique magazines of the early 1960s.
Order the book on Amazon.com.
Category: Images Tagged: 1960s, Brooklyn Boys, Danny Fitzgerald, fine art, Les Demi Dieux, nudes, photographer, Stef
Posted on October 19, 2013
As far as we know, Fitzgerald never printed this image. We found a short, four-frame strip of images of brothers Johnny and Vinny (second and fourth from left) smoking between two vintage cars with friends, on a street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The film roll was dated 1963.
This image appears in the book Brooklyn Boys: Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux.
Category: Images Tagged: 1960s, Brooklyn, Buick, Carroll Gardens, Danny Fitzgerald, Les Demi Dieux, photographer
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