Karel Egermeier

Karel (Charles) Egermeier (1904-19??) was a Czechoslovak photographer of boys working in France.

Egermeier (nicknamed "L'Aiglon") was the oldest of a group of photographers of "scoutisme" in France whose photographic outpout was published in several youth and scouting magazines from the late 1930s to the 1960s. His scouting pictures used the heroic cliches of the era: low camera angles, out of frame gazes, diagonal compositions, etc (1) whiles his nude studies had classical references.

Many of his scouting pictures, however, had the boys composed in suggestive poses which, even though not at all indecent, Peyrefitte and other pederasts of his era considered them as "the roof of the erotism."(2)

Egermeier's most famous work is the illustration Henry de Montherlant's Paysage des Olympiques (1940) with 87 photographs (primarily nudes of adolescents and young men). He also illustrated Peyrefitte's Du Vésuve à l'Etna (1952) and some of his photographs appeared later in The Boy: A Photographic Essay (1964).

Notes

(1) D.H. Mader, "The problems and pleasures of looking: photographers of 'scoutisme'," Gayme 50-51. (2) Roger Peyrefitte, Propos secrets (Paris: Albin Michel, 1977), p. 188.

External links

A nude example of Egermeier's photography (from Paysage des Olympiques).