Photographer Blake Little has enjoyed a decades-long career crafting some of the most iconic images taken of every celebrity you’ve ever heard of. At the same time, he’s also published books and widely exhibited in gallery and museum settings, focusing on his parallel personal practice as a visual artist—specifically engaged in inventive representations of the queer community. His latest project—which is, actually, his earliest—revives a foundational c. 1981 portfolio of classical male nudes activating under-construction architectural landmarks in Los Angeles. In richly produced black and white prints, Little seamlessly combines a classical, art historical sense of the body with a sculptural, avant-garde eye for space, pattern, and detail—and a rather lackadaisical attitude toward trespassing.

Construction Nudes 1981-85 is Little’s eighth monograph, as well as an impressive exhibition in Jaco Moretti gallery in Palm Springs, and in truth the power of the pictures comes from multiple threads that converge in its purview. The portfolio comprises a lyrical regard to queer identity and constructs (pun intended) of masculinity in the LGBTQ+ community, a documentarian and interpretive record of an equally important time in LA history, and an occasion for remembrance at an equally fraught time for both in the present day. The work also makes an excellent case for the superpowers of black and white film as a material and medium, because the richness of tone and detail in the prints is a large part of what makes these works such powerful vessels for the curiosity, emotion, experimentalism, freedom, and unique vision of a young artist at play and at work in the midst of finding their creative voice.

In preparation for the upcoming 1984 Olympics, the Los Angeles metropolis was growing exponentially. Building zones were everywhere, and Little was drawn to them. Sneaking models into these possibly dangerous construction sites inspired these photographs, but the work also presents an alternative vision to the ravages of the unfolding AIDS crisis and other kinds of portrayals of gay men that weren’t necessarily helping. Little’s first body of work after moving to Los Angeles in 1980, Construction Nudes also speaks to his emerging chosen family of new friends from the local gay community. Recently rediscovered in his archive, Little knew right away it was imperative to print, publish, and exhibit this work today. 

Opening night at the Jaco Moretti Arts was a testament to the power of this idea, a huge gathering and at times, a moving reunion. Beforehand, we had a chance to sit down with Little inside the show and talk it over. As with most photographers, we started out by talking about the camera he used. More specifically, the fact that it was a 4x5 film camera. One thing that film negatives make possible is the ability to create lush new prints four decades later, but, Little remembers, “I was exploring 35mm, 120mm, and other analog camera formats. It cost like $600 worth of film to go out on these shoots, so I knew I had to be really good at it.” To that end, he would meticulously scout his locations. “There was no wandering around,” he says. “I knew exactly where I was going and everything was planned. I would scout on Saturday and shoot on Sunday, when there was the least chance of anyone being there. Then from that moment, we kind of had to hurry. Come Monday, all the people are back at work at the building site.”

Little later realized this series also laid the foundation for an aspect of his commercial portraiture technique that was always responsive to architectural settings. “I'm always placing, even if it's a celebrity picture, I'm always conscious of this person in the environment and the composition of how they are in the space.” But in this series, his chosen elements of architecture are dramatically appealing in their own right. The stairs, the circles of wide pipes, the textures of concrete, the drape of tarps, the wonky geometries of rebar and scaffolding, the evidence of wear on tools and equipment, the places where the structure meets the dirt floor underneath, the perfection of measurements that emerge from the chaos as the buildings take shape like ruins in reverse—all of this would already be interesting enough without the models. But the men are stunning and fascinating spirits, and any one of them would be photogenic alone in a white cyclorama. The pairing of the hard and soft in both body and building was and remains inspired, formally, poetically, and metaphorically.

“Little’s…classicizing nudes connect the contemporary moment to a deeper history of representing and appreciating the male form,” writes Ryan Linkof, Ph.D., Curator, Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts as part of the book, and indeed the work’s undeniable Greco-Roman or Renaissance aesthetic coupled with a Mapplethorpe-infused reconsideration of beauty are very much play in the timelessness of the work. As well, this thoughtful stance forestalls any easy reading of eroticism, directing the attention instead in a toward evocations of statuary, academia, mythology, and even dance.

“When I work I'm immersed in the influences of a lot of fields,” says Little. “I love modern dance,” and you can see that in certain moments across the works. “It's the way one arm is in light, one in shadow,” the stretching balanced on a ladder, the encircling embrace from behind, the saintlike balancing on piercing rebar, the conforming to a perfect circle, the pulling back of the tarp in a theatrical act of strength and revelation… “I see the creative freedom of my youth in these photos,” says Little, “and I am reminded how, by this point, photography was already becoming my calling.”

Construction Nudes is available for purchase here.