Press Release

April 18, 2006

Stacy Thal
415-543-3476

MEL ROBERTS’ PRIVATE COLLECTION AT HOMOBILIA

Vintage Prints of California Boys Available for the First Time Since the 1970s

San Francisco, CA -- Approaching his 83rd Birthday, renowned physique photographer Mel Roberts is still making news. The vintage 5” x 5” color prints he’s held for almost three decades are being offered to collectors and physique photography fans for the first time, exclusively at Homobilia.com

First published in Young Physique magazine in 1963, Roberts took an estimated 50,000 photographs of nearly 200 male models: all of them friends— many of them lovers. They weren’t the perfectly proportioned bodybuilders common in the physique magazines of the time. Roberts’ sun-tanned guys were posed casually by the pool, or against the backdrop of Southern California’s stunning natural environment. In 2003, The New Yorker described his "witty Technicolor pictures" as "capturing all the giddy delights of being young during summertime, [but] it’s not all high camp."

Considered too tame to be published in the 1980s, Roberts’ work has found a new, appreciative audience through magazines from The Advocate to XY. His photography is now represented in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Palm Springs. Private collectors around the world have sought his new, brilliantly colored, large-format prints. One of the most avid, Sir Elton John, acquired almost sixty of his images for his personal collection.

Barry Harrison, one of the partners in Homobilia, explains their enduring appeal: "A sense of sexual adventure permeates Roberts’ work, which often comes across as a photographic strip-tease. It captures a pre-AIDS era, when a guy could hitch a ride to LA, go to a party, pass a few joints, take of his clothes and have sex, just because he felt like it."

Mel Roberts is available for comments and interviews. His vintage prints of California men are available in very limited quantities, at Homobilia.com.