This essay inquires into the development and use of aesthetic strategies — of “seeing” and “being seen” — in early twentiethcentury photography. An analysis of photography in criminological studies and in the homosexual journals Die Insel and Die Freundschaft illustrate how photography contributed to developing cultural values, visual ideals, and alternative masculinities in Germany at that time. Photography taken by and for German homosexual men both overcame and underscored hegemonic constructions of masculinity.

At the turn of the twentieth century, men of science saw every form of technical production as a realm between art (a product of masculinity) and science (a field for men). Photography was believed to archive visual truths. A photograph of a person can be seen as an “embodiment” of a visual moment. In the “photographic body,” the signified becomes material. The fleeting moment is captured and made tangible. Compressing an individual's past, present, and future into one visual expression, the photographic portrait becomes a sign, a hieroglyph; truly, a visual signifier of body language. A photograph of an ideal male, then, incorporates and reifies a strong masculine (self-)image.

The male photographic body seemed to be a fixed and immutable body of information. Hidden truths surrounding the photographic subject became apparent upon closer examination, however. “Aller Kunstfertigkeit des Photographen und aller Planmäßigkeit in der Haltung seines Modells zum Trotz fühlt der Beschauer unwiderstehlich den Zwang, in solchem Bild das winzige Fünkchen Zufall, Hier und Jetzt, zu suchen,” Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) observed. This “spark of accident” simultaneously legitimized and undermined photography as an expression of visual verisimilitude. As in a double exposure, the immediate and hidden truths of the photographic body blurred the fixed image. This “double exposure” was an unexpected, unwanted foil to the photograph's intended “singular truth.” And the random inclusion of objects in a photograph evoked unintentional connotations that influenced the viewer's judgment. That meant that not only the staging of a model's masculinity but also the total photographic setting challenged the supposedly inherent truth of the photographic medium and the integrity of the masculine project.

Benjamin's photographic “spark of accident” — found in minute details that might have escaped the human eye but were captured by the camera — turned photography into a means of identifying “nonmasculine” attributes in men. The photographed body was subjected to a hegemonic masculine gaze.