A Kickstarter project organized by Hunter O'Hanian and Mischa Gawronski in conjunction with the Bob Mizer Museum is raising funds to publish a new book on Harry Bush's work. 

After 20 years in the military, Harry began his artistic career in the mid-1960s in Bob Mizer’s landmark publication, Physique Pictorial. His work is full of humor and irony, and definitely sexy. Through the discovery of hundreds of letters, his writing reveals a man who was shy, withdrawn, and unsure of his place in the artistic and cultural landscape of his time as well as within the gay community around him.

But Harry was a leader in the cadre of gay artists who helped shape gay visual culture in the last quarter of the 20th century - artists such as Tom of Finland, Etienne, Bill Ward, and Rex. However he had a darker side – often withdrawn and reclusive, he rejected the gay culture he found and on several occasions nearly destroyed all of his artwork.

Working with the archival collections at the Bob Mizer Museum and Photographic Archives – the organization housing the largest collection of Harry’s artwork and papers, Leather Archives & Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Tom of Finland Foundation, GLBT Historical Society, Bishopsgate Institute, and ONE Archives, co-editors O’Hanian and Gawronski have amassed hundreds of letters written by and to Harry. 

What emerges is a complex portrait of an American artist whose psyche was shaped by a simultaneous thirst for visibility and isolation. Having served in WWII, he worked at the Pentagon in the 1950s, living in Washington during the Lavender Scare. In the mid 1960s, he moved back to Southern California determined to be an artist and part of "the gay community."  We explore gay history in those heady, sex-positive, anything goes years after the Stonewall uprising, and the explosion of gay magazines which were a lifeline for so many people.

Learn more about the project and make a pledge now.