Draft:Alan B. Stone

Background

Born in 1928, Alan Bentley Stone grew up in the Montreal's west-end neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. He developed an interest in photography as a teenager while attending West Hill High School and participating in Scouting. Many of his early photographs feature subjects that would later recur in his work, including Montreal's port, the Lachine Canal, scout camps, and the city's urban landscape.

Career

Stone obtained his first paid photography work through the Scouting community, producing instructional images illustrating knot-tying, water safety, and Scouting activities.^[2] In 1951, at the age of 23, he enrolled at the School of Modern Photography on East 57th Street in New York City, where he refined his sense of composition. Upon returning to Montreal that year, he began working as a freelance photographer—a career he would pursue for the rest of his life.^[2]

During the early 1950s, Stone's photography increasingly focused on urban subjects. He was drawn to Montreal's port and its community of sailors and longshoremen, as well as to street life and sports scenes. Between 1950 and 1960, these interests led him to begin photographing bodybuilders.^[2]

At that time, a discreet market existed for so-called beefcake photography, purchased mainly by gay men. Stone's images appeared in American and European magazines devoted to bodybuilding and physique modeling. He also sold prints by mail under the name Mark One Studio, a small but successful business he operated from his mother's home in N.D.G. until 1962, and later in Pointe-Claire.^[3]

Stone eventually turned to more conventional photography after the Montreal Morality Squad, while investigating another photographic studio, obtained a warrant to search his home. Although no charges were filed, police seized his negatives, which were later returned.^[4] The incident had a chilling effect on his business.^[3] Later in his career, Stone travelled extensively, especially in Western Canada, photographing historical and natural sites for tourism publications.^[2]

Following his death in 1992, Stone's work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, and he was the subject of the documentary film Eye on the Guy: Alan B. Stone & the Age of Beefcake (2006), directed by Philip Lewis and Jean-François Monette.^[1]

Personal life and death

Stone's father died when he was a teenager and he went to work after completing high school. He supported and lived with his mother and aunt. He pursued gardening, the outdoors, and travel, and "wasn't so interested in the new gay liberation."^[5]

Stone died in 1992 from complications of arthritis, which had affected him for nearly three decades. Despite his waning energy in later life, he took up quirky causes; in the late 1970s, he led a personal crusade against the metric system, and he encouraged residents of Western Canada to plant Quebec maple trees to promote Canadian unity.^[6]