| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography. By John Ibson. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. xxii, 237 pp. $32.95, ISBN 1-58834-055-4.)

This richly illustrated volume contains approximately one hundred and fifty photographs, taken from the 1850s to the 1950s, showing American men together. Almost all the photos come from John Ibson's personal collection. The vast majority sensitively depict both physical and emotional intimacy between their male subjects. Utilizing everyday photography as evidence, Ibson wants to explain why such intimacy between American males declined rapidly in the United States beginning in the 1920s, albeit with a brief resurgence of closeness between men during World War II. Since the latter event, Ibson notes, there has been a growing physical distance between men, not just in everyday photography, but in the very culture that photography captures. Ibson argues that the space between contemporary men and boys represents present-day American males' inability to express their feelings, especially with each other; the gender straitjackets that surround them from early childhood; and the rampant misogynist and even rape culture that predominates in the country. Ibson maintains that the growth of physical and emotional distance between American males is the result of the social construction of homosexuality and the concomitant development of homophobia. His thesis is not new, but Ibson contributes a significant, if necessarily selective, visual record of the phenomenon.

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