"The 60-second excitement" first appeared in Polaroid ads around 1966. The phrase described the time between pressing the shutter and peeling apart the film to produce a finished photo. Ads framed this brief interval into a little drama: anticipation, gathering people together, and then the big reveal.

For gay men, the "big reveal" often meant something more charged. They embraced Polaroids as a new way to create homoerotic images of and for themselves without labs, negatives, or third parties. This not only reduced the risk of exposure, blackmail, and arrest, it made their lives more visible and shareable.

The Polaroids in this collection document a pre-Stonewall world in which men, gay and straight, willingly posed naked in the home of one extraordinary man. Over 100 color and black & white images with an introduction by Matthew Rettenmund.

Barry Harrison founded Homobilia.com in 2006 to serve as a gallery and archive of gay art, photography and memorabilia.

Matthew Rettenmund is editor, founder of Popstar! magazine and blog Boyculture.com, as well author of several books, including Encyclopedia Madonnica and the novel Boy Culture, which was adapted into a movie in 2006 and in a spin-off web series in the 2020s.