Affectionate Men: A Photographic History of a Century of Male Couples, 1850-1950

In Affectionate Men, photographic collector Russell Bush has assembled an album of images--daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes-de-visite, cabinet cards, and ordinary Kodak prints--that form an idiosyncratic record of the affection between men, from the 1850's to the 1950's.

The earliest daguerreotypes in the book was made in America around 1850- an image frozen in time long before the invention of the automobile, telephone, radio, or airplane. Over a period of one hundred years, we can see the changing styles in clothes, hair, and attitudes, but what remains constant is the expression of affection and love between these men. Some may be gay, others assuredly not, but whatever the relationship, these images celebrate Walt Whitman's "dear love of comrades."