Customer Reviews

Dear Friends: American Photographs of Men Together, 1840-1918

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the sweetest book. The photographs are magnificent, and though there is lots of interesting text, the pictures "speak" for themselves. I found them to be so innocent and moving.

I have a friend who served in WWII and he once told me the story of young men and boys waiting in line to eat at Boot Camp --- HOLDING HANDS, with NO-ONE giving it a second thought. (Do that today and see how long you're standing in THAT line!) Not all of the photographs in this book are as innocent and pure as that, but most are.

DEAR FRIENDS was featured recently in a Richard Rodriguez segment of the NEWS HOUR on PBS. If you saw that segment --- you still need to read this book for your own personal closer look. Innocence has such a beautiful face!

If this were just a book of "photographs of men together" without the heavy-handed, ponderous stretches of the author's awkward, long-winded prose between photos, it would be an enormous improvement. Deitcher's text reads like a proposal for selling the book to a publisher - I lost count how many times he states things like, "this book is..." and then describes the book you are holding in your hand.

Newsflash: We're already reading the book. Stop describing what you intend to accomplish with it and just do it, already.

I liked when he used quotes and excerpts that were contemporary to the times the photos were taken, which give the reader a better idea of what life and society was like then. But there was too little of this, and too much conjecture on his part, and, yes, I know it's his book, but too much personalizing. I wasn't interested in knowing that the author, as a young man, fantasized about the photos of swimmers he saw in American Red Cross "Junior Lifesaving" manuals (page 50). Rather, I was a little creeped out, and unsure why this very personal anecdote is included in his book.

Here's a passage that kind of sums up my problem with his writing - also from page 50:

"Today we can swim in seas of homoerotica and X-rated porn. It should not be taken as a detraction from the pleasures of porn to underscore the guilelessness and ingenuity with which image-starved gay men and lesbians once perused everyday representations for sexual excitement; nor to admit to mourning the passage of such creative strategies for (homo)sexual survival as one of the costs we have had to pay for replacing gay subcultural ingenuity with gay culture, tout court. There are, of course, other related trade-offs in which one thing is lost at the price of another being gained. Ultimately, this book provides evidence of a parallel trade-off that results from the historical transformation of the social meaning of same-sex affection from a nineteenth-century tradition of romantic friendship and comradely love, and its physical expression among men who posed for photographers holding hands, entwining limbs, or resting in the shelter of each other's accomodating bodies, innocent of the suspicion that such behavior would later arouse."

And he goes ON like this! I defy anyone to get any sort of cognizable meaning out of all this academic double-talk. I'm left wondering if the photos came up short and he had a larger page-count to fill because he says basically the same thing over and over throughout the course of the book, and it never gets any more straight-forward or lucid than what you just read above.

So - in short: Liked the concept, loved the photos, was NOT a fan of the text.

In a spirit of full disclosure: I am a member of the target audience for this book - a gay man interested in photography, history, and critical theory.

I'm also a skeptic, and know that 19th- and early-20th-century American photography was not the outlet of homosociality the author suggests. Among the reasons I find his program suspicious:

-Many of the men in specific photographs bear striking FAMILY resemblances to each other.

-Given the long exposure times required for studio photography of the era, practitioners had to find ways to keep the subjects as still as possible. For individuals, photographers would often use a kind of iron armature to keep the subject from swaying (which would blur the photo). A clever solution to the problem with multiple subjects: have them touch, rest on each other, and general overlap to steady themselves. This is a conventional method of overcoming the limitations of the medium, not necessarily the expression of physical attraction among the subjects.

-Given the fact that the poses for obvious family members do not differ from those of men who do NOT resemble each other, the author would have to retrospectively assume that the photos convey public acknowledgement of incest, if one is to take his arguments to their logical conclusion.

-Humor and irony are not always visible to every observer. The author reads the photos with a kind of literalness that seduce him into back-projection. He doesn't approach the images with (an admittedly ephemeral) objectivity, because he wants these often beautiful and overwhelmingly interesting pictures to express what they cannot.

-Same-sex couples involved in sexual relationships may very well appear in some of these photographs; given what little the author knows about their provenance, it is unlikely we'll ever know which.

I'm not sure where I heard about this book, but I am grateful to the author for writing it. The photographs Deitcher describes and provides for us are beyond words. They provide such a wonderful insight into male friendships/relationships in the 19th Century and are very interesting to look at and ponder. This book is of particular interest to me as I'm currently writing a novel about a great uncle of mine and I have several photographs of him with other men, some more defined than others. But it isn't just the photographs that makes the book so excellent, it is Deitcher's words that bring everything to life. I was interested in his analyses of the relationships and that he is honest and forthcoming with the fact that we can never really know for certain what these photos represent, particularly when examined within the context of 19th Century social constructions.

This book shows some fantastic photos of men together as friends.
The author covers all bases of male intimacy in this book from close and dear friends to the possibility of a closer bond that borders on the physical relationship. He even covers research into the friendships of artists and icons of the time including the great Walt Whitman. This is a great historical analogy of male intimacy through the 18th and 19th centuries!

Dear Friends is a truly beautiful book; full of wonderful, sweet photos that speek volumes in and of themselves. The text is great, but the pictures are the true treasure. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, this book proves the old adage right.

I'm not sure where I heard about this book, but I am grateful to the author for writing it. The photographs Deitcher describes and provides for us are beyond words. They provide such a wonderful insight into male friendships/relationships in the 19th Century and are very interesting to look at and ponder. This book is of particular interest to me as I'm currently writing a novel about a great uncle of mine and I have several photographs of him with other men, some more defined than others. But it isn't just the photographs that makes the book so excellent, it is Deitcher's words that bring everything to life. I was interested in his analyses of the relationships and that he is honest and forthcoming with the fact that we can never really know for certain what these photos represent, particularly when examined within the context of 19th Century social constructions.

I was hoping for a completely pictorial work, but am not displeased with the commentary provided. A great book, but I was underwhelmed with the amount of photographs, I just expected more, even with prose added in between.

Art historian David Deitcher has made a major contribution to our understanding of the American male. In particular, David, shows the importance of 19th century intimate male relationships. Mainly through multiple period photographs of intimate men and a well-rounded historical analysis of male sexuality, David argues that intimate relationships between men were fairly common in the 19th century. In particular, David contends, temporary and oftentimes intimate relationships occurred between men in their late teens and early twenties before they married.

Dear Friends shows that there is no clear distinction on what male sexuality represents, or that one's sexual orientation is permanent and fixed. Men and the relationships they share with one another are distinct and important for us to study, understand and value. By doing so, we gain a healthier understanding of ourselves. Dear Fiends shows what we (modern-day American males) can learn from our 19th century counter-parts in helping us better understand ourselves and our relationships we share with other men throughout our lives.

An excellent gift for a gay male friend.