New York photographer Justin Violini —who wowed us with his coverage of NYC Fashion Week 2011—captures smokin’ hot guys in series after series of gorgeous photos.
We certainly aren’t complaining.
Now he’s collected his favorite snapshots from the past year (most taken in Bushwick and the Bowery) into a scrapbook that celebrates the male form.
And again, we don’t complain.
Click through the next pages for a taste of the full collection.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Franco
Don’t we have enough scrapbooks celebrating the male form already? Ha!
Mark
Isn’t there one young man who’s a real man? You know, chest hair? What’s with this fascination of smooth boys? Sheesh
Ian
@Mark: Oh, please. So sick of hearing that anyone without chest hair is not a “real man.” I like guys with chest hair too, but it doesn’t make smooth guys any less “real” or “man.” Grow up.
MikeE
@Ian: that’s ok, some of us are sick of the obsession with making men look pre-pubescent by eliminating all signs of adulthood from their bodies.
Ian
@MikeE: So, according to you, any man who (even naturally) doesn’t have chest hair is “pre-pubescent” in looks, not an adult. Gotcha. Thanks for the insights.
JKB
In deference to my lesbian sisters, I am still waiting for erotic female photos for their pleasure and my aesthetic liking. I mean, if you can post stories about lesbians, you can surely also post pics.
BTW, #10/11 makes me SWOON! :P~
Not So Much A Pretty Boy
Number 14. Yes effffing please.
I have chest hair and as a matter of fact, I hate it. I’m one of the only males in my family that does. It’s annoying and gross and I’d rather not have it.
So, does it make you “manly”? Probably not. It’s not something I care for in a man.
stephen
yawn…..
Andrew
I don’t know why you all care. Just like what you like and leave it at that. I found some of the guys to be very hot and manly and some to be way too child-like (yuck). That said, the number 6 photo was simply gorgeous.
An Ella Fan
Smokin hot??? I guess – if you like prepubescent white kids.
What?
The hairlessness was unappealing enough but they had to include that nude “baby picture” pose to put it over the top.
If you like “men” who look like young teens some of who are butt naked posing like newborn infants go right ahead. Excuse me while I wash the taste out with some men who show signs of being men.
Ian
It’s astonishing how many Qty readers are so hung up over body hair and equate a smooth body with pre-puberty and child porn. WTF? It’s one thing to dig hairy guys or older guys or whatever. It’s another thing to say that a guy who’s not hairy is not a “real man” or is “pre-pubescent” etc. Since when is a 20-something “pre-pubescent”? Since when does a man’s masculinity hinge upon the number of chest hairs he has? Talk about hang-ups. Jeesh.
mike128
I’m not going to jump into the body hair debate. But I will say that I’m not sure what’s so impressive about these photos. It’s not hard to make a guy with a fit body look good. I don’t see anything particularly interesting or artistic about these photos beyond the fact that it’s the kind of model people want to see with a shirt off.
Joe
I dont think it’s about whether chest hair makes you manly or not… more about the ever growing push for hairless men. It’s not exactly natural or accurate. Men are hairy, some more than others, but very very few, remain hairless past 21. But yet there is this projection of the “ideal smooth man” in our media all the time now. Even Chris Evans, a beautiful man with some modest chest hair had to shave it for Captain America! So many actors have to do the same and I find it really unfortunate. Honestly, I have no preference. I like a guy with an average amount of hair, so a bit of chest hair and what not… but I have dated a hairless guy too and honestly, I didn’t miss the hair but I never preferred the “hairlessness”.
I draw the line at guys who shave their chest. I’m sorry, but if you got it, flaunt it. Make it work. If it’s too bushy, then trim it. But don’t shave it all off and try to look like one of the guys who are naturally smooth. It’s not who you are and it looks stupid when I see your chest stubble. Makes me think you are not okay with your own body which is a huge turn off. If your a swimmer or something, cool. Fine.
I feel like even straight guys get ashamed of their hair now. Maybe we are evolving to be less hairy and thats the way to go, who knows. But for now guys, keep the hair if you got it.
MikeE
@Joe: Thank-you. Very well put.
The media, and the fashion milieu have been guilty of pushing this trend of hairlessness.
Fashion in particular has promoted a look that borders on infantilism. I’m not talking only about hairless guys. The women are made to look as young as possible, skinny, breastless, all attributes of pre-pubescence. It’s unhealthy.
Jim Hlavac
Being from New York, I find it odd that one could find a white guy in Bushwick at all. Indeed, my family used to own an apartment building at 228 Grove Street in Bushwick — back in the 1960s it went nearly 100% Hispanic, with the Italian/German mix moving to the Long Island and Staten Island suburbs (the latter quickly after the Verrazano Bridge was completed in 1964,) and is now a mix of virtually every ethnicity, mostly Puerto Ricans and Jamaicans, except for white, or Euro-Americans as I like to call myself, rather than a color. Though, in one pocket there’s a bunch of Hasidim, along Eastern Parkway, but none of these boys looks Hasid, no. As for the Bowery — that isn’t exactly a neighborhood, so much as a street, which wends its way from Cooper Union in the East Village all the way to Chinatown, almost 2 miles away, and lo, nary a Chinese guy in the mix (in fact, there seem to be several photos of two of the same men in your collection.)
Not to mention, the guys here are scrawny to the point of anorexia. Well, that would be the Bowery Bums perhaps, since several homeless shelters are along the Bowery.
CBRad
@Jim Hlavac: It’s probably just an out-of-towner photographer photographing a bunch of other out-of-towners. The photographs might have been taken in Bushwick but…it’s just pretend bullshit. The very real young Brooklyn natives (from all the different neighborhoods) provide much more of a plethora of hotness than in these pics.
CBRad
P.S. I don’t think there’s been a genuine portfolio of New York natives since 1959’s “Brooklyn Gang” by Davidson.
Aiden
I’d just like to see some color(Asian and black). You’d think gays were all white/Hispanic judging by the pics and parties and prides.
comus
Hair, no hair. Not the point. They look depressed and hungry. That’s “hot”?
floofy
I sense the torture in his subjects…ok not really LOL – this is the type of thing that causes me to laugh out loud. These are all well and good. Prolific talent of the wow’ing variety? Who can’t achieve this sort of thing with some fairly easy photo techniques and a group of boys from the NYC Waiters Union/SAG? Not exactly the most challenging marketing, either. Not to worry, though – there are millions of old queens in the city, and I’m sure lots of people that will buy these. So many so, in fact, I bet you could create a whole silly culture around the subjects to make gullible gays want to hang them in their home. A whole beeny babies-style demand of your own among some upper West gays. Hate to be critical of someone just trying to make a photo career, but if this and FashionWeek is all you’re demanding of your personal work, it’s probably not enough.
CBRad
@floofy: You’re right. It’s all “well and good”. some of these guys are sort of cute, to me. But this is all such mediocre stuff.
Kudos
Kudos for mixing in different ethnicities–but that’s about all that’s intersting with these shots, which are predominantly pedestrian, predictable, and flat. There’s no life, there’s no interest. It’s another cadre of hairless, barely legal boys (of which we see more bone stucture than man structure) in their pseudo feminine pouty poses and vacant expressions. It’s just been done so much. Why didn’t the photog call it: some dudes I fucked in my loft over the last year who let me take pics of them?
Mike
it’s one mans vision, not a record of history, if it’s history you’re looking for go to the library, if it’s hair, then a wig shop, but stop being nit picking lil fags, and just look at the pictures for the composition and not trying to get your sick hard !
B
No. 2 · Mark wrote, “… You know, chest hair? What’s with this fascination of smooth boys?”
… Hey Mark, part of the point of the photos is for the photographer to show off too – use of lighting, composition, etc. A photographer may want “smooth” models because that will work better given the type of lighting the photographer wants to use.
Armrio
Oh..the media is pushing the trend of hairlessness…bla bla bla…
In the 80’s the fashion was just the opositte, lots of hair, mustaches, etc.
We had a boom of shaved guys in the last decade, so now with with all these excess people start complaining saying that real men are hairy,and soon body hair will be fashionable again and there will be so much hairy men that people will get tired of if and start saying it´s gross, and then hairless guys will be fashionable again, an that will go round and round…
You know what…drop the bullshit, enjoy men, hairy or hairless.
david
am 18year old and i have a younger brother who is 16 we both have chest hair what is all the fuss about
peter
@Mark: I hate to be the one to inform you but the Marlboro man succumbed to lung cancer more than two decades ago.
Go back to the seventies!