Tired of inspecting female nudes in art museums, I happily retired to my host’s Paris apartment with a copy of Butt, an Amsterdam-based gay culture magazine we found in a nearby bookstore. Its Spring issue, number 22, includes a handful of amusing, if unfocused, interviews with a design duo, a hip-hop artist, and the creator of the portrait zine Shoot. The interviewers’ devotion is especially clear in a Q&A with deceased gay porn director Fred Halsted, whose posthumous “answers” the writer pieced together from archived articles. The editors’ appreciation of the male nude, in all its hairy variety, is evident throughout. Surprisingly, the candid nudity—men in their kitchens or standing in rumpled socks—seems more vulnerable than obscene; it’s even charming at times. Photos include a nude drummer feature, a six-page centerfold spread, and finally, the below-the-waist shots accompanying readers’ letters, some of the most succinct and hilarious writing in the mag.
