Black Thunder No 1 Third World Studio Chicago Vintage Gay Black Male Physique

$129 · Offered by eBay

BLACK THUNDER, No. 1 — the first issue. Published quarterly by THIRD WORLD STUDIO, P.O. Box 520, Chicago, Illinois 60690. Distributed under the HCI imprint. Cover price $8.50. Undated, c. 1980. Third World Studio was a Chicago house devoted entirely to photographing Black men, and it ran a real publishing program: a series of quarterly titles, mail-order photo sets, and a subscriber bulletin called BLACK MALE that went free to regular customers. Companion titles in the series included Black Sugar, Black Cat, Black Roots, Black Fever, Black Knights and Black Stars. The studio published a statement of purpose in its own magazines, and it is worth reading as a document. Third World set out to show the beauty, masculinity and sensuality of the Black male, and drew a hard line on how: no trick photography, no fantasy settings, no contrived devices. Just the men. That is a deliberate rejection of how Black models had been handled elsewhere in the field — the exoticizing props and staged scenarios that other houses relied on — and Third World put it in print in every issue. The photography follows the promise. Plain backgrounds, direct portraits, ordinary clothing. The cover model is in a tank top looking off-camera, and the whole book carries that same unforced quality. A Black-focused studio operating its own imprint out of Chicago, with its own distribution and its own stated editorial position, is genuinely uncommon. First issues of these series are the hardest to find. Conditio

• Publisher: Third World Studio / HCI
• Year: 1980
• Condition: Very Good

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