Complete 15-year run of the arts and entertainment magazine. A successor to Ballroom Dance Magazine, AFTER DARK was a pioneering gay publication that neither explicitly acknowledged its target audience nor made any pretense of hiding it — simply locating gay icons at the center and forefront of mainstream creative culture. An essential part of the 1970s’ landscape, AFTER DARK was described as “an audacious mass-market experiment in gay eroticism” by Daniel Harris (The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (1997). In its early years, the magazine gave considerable space to suggestive photo spreads of innumerable male celebrities and dancers; however, in the late 1970s, Patrick Pacheco succeeded WIlliam Como as editor, focusing on serious criticism and reducing the number and size of photographs. Declining sales led his replacement, Louis Miele, to reverse course and return to the original formula, but the magazine’s run nevertheless came to an end in 1983.

With articles on dance, music theater, film, urban nightlife, bodybuilding and men’s fashion, feature subjects included Maria Callas, David Bowie, Candy Darling, Jane Fonda, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nuryev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dolly Parton, Mae West, Tab Hunter, Richard Gere, Joan Crawford, Tommy Lee Jones, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Shirley Bassey, Robert Redford, and Paul Newman — among many others. A vital record of the 1970s and a foundational piece of gay cultural history.

$3000