Jupiter With a Camera: Renaissance Beauty In The Art Of Tom Bianchi

Tom Bianchi (b. 1945) is an American photographer, sculptor, and poet who celebrates the beauty of the male body like Michelangelo did. The many models are often his lovers, so the photographer's lens shows us subjects seen by a man in love. Some say that to love is to see things as they were designed by god. Thus, in the photographs of Tom Bianchi, we face the dwellers of paradise who always seem to bear the aura of perfection they inherited from their creator.

Fig. 1. Tom Bianchi by Ben Smales (tombianchi.com)

Fig. 2. Instagram.com

Fig. 3. Men I've Loved: Prose, Poems and Pictures, 2001 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 4. Instagram.com

Fig. 5. tombianchi.com

Fig. 6. Shadow on the Wall (tombianchi.com)

Fig. 7. Out of the Studio, 1991 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 8. Out of the Studio, 1991 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 9. Outpost, 1996 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 10. Instagram.com

Fig. 11. Instagram.com

Fig. 12. Instagram.com

Fig. 13. Dive / Jump, LA, 1991 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 14. Extraordinary Friends, 1996 (Instagram.com)

The Use of a Juris Doctor Degree

The ground on which Tom Bianchi started lay far from an artistic path. Despite the art being his childhood dream, he attained a degree in political science, studying at the University of New Mexico and the Northwestern University School of Law. In 1975, Bianchi moved to New York and worked as an attorney at Columbia Pictures. This company's logo opens many movies; in the case of Bianchi, it began a new chapter in his life when he was given an SX-70 Polaroid camera at an executive conference in Miami. The decision to take this device for instant photographs to the Fire Island Pines, the modern paradise where his friends lived, gave rise to his artistic career. Since then, the destiny of his J. D. degree was decided: the former lawyer pasted it into a painting, ESQ Notes from a Lawyer who Left, four years after settling in NY.

Fig. 15. Fire Island Pines, Polaroids 1975-1983 (Instagram.com)

Fig. 16. Fire Island Pines, Polaroids 1975-1983 (Instagram.com)

Paradise and the Island of the Dead

Bianchi is known as the author of 21 books of photographs, poems, and essays devoted to homosexuality. The book of polaroids Fire Island Pines Polaroids 1975–1983, created with the help of Bianchi's partner Ben Smales, is probably the most influential of all his works regarding its message and context.

In Premium more about Bianchi's Fire Island Pines Polaroids series, the influences of physique photography on his work,  41 additional photos and more.

Click HERE for the violent gay adventures in the art of Dom Orejudos

Sources: Wikipedia.org; instagram.com/tombianchi/; tombianchi.com; ODDA Interview by Eduardo Gión, 2019. For more explicit content visit tombianchimembers.com