“Kids these days don’t get things that are harder to come by than a Google search. People had to maraud around to find magazines like this in the 1950s and 60s, in their smalltown drugstores or porno shops,” says Jack Pierson of the appeal of mid-century, physique-focused magazines such as Tomorrow’s Man. Reappropriating the publication’s title as well as its retro bodybuilding aesthetic for his book project of the same name, Pierson takes viewers on a dizzying visual journey of homoerotica. 

For the second edition, previewed here, Pierson referenced his own vast archives and championed the work of gay artists as well as his own students: highlights include sci-fi-imbued illustrations courtesy of 1970s Playboy contributor Mel Odom and surreal assemblages from the New York-based artist Tibi Tibi Neuspiel. The resulting visual remixes rebel against the photobook format, leaving work straddling page breaks and genre definitions. “I’m hoping to do a dozen of these each term, and part of the idea is to keep some people consistent throughout the whole thing, so that it gives a feeling of addition and subtraction,” he says. “Hopefully something radical will happen along the way.”