In the years before the beginnings of gay legitimacy, long before Queer Eye and Will and Grace turned gay men into a must have accessory for the new millennium. Back just a few decades when gay bashing and discrimination were thoroughly respectable preoccupations for good, upright, Christian, hetero gentlemen, we did things differently.

Clearly there was danger in disclosure but fortunately fooling straighty didn’t prove much of a challenge. The history of gay male photography before the late 1960s is one of charming, inventive coding, denial, alibi and the barely plausible pretence of innocence.

Caution – adult themes