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The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green
An Introduction
By Tom Bianchi
![[Outpost cover]](../Covers/BianCover.jpg)
Fifteen years ago, when the designer Luis Ortega designed a pool for his client's Hollywood hills house, he could have imagined it populated by the men who would come to be entertained there. The commissioning client was Duke Comegys -- gay, social, and an art patron who deserves credit for actualizing Ortega's design. Their idea was to create a "swimming hole," reminiscent of the stone quarry in Texas where Duke had gone to swim as a boy. This was a place designed for pleasure. What Luis may not have anticipated was that he had also designed a perfect outdoor studio in which to record the beauty of those men and their play.
One hundred years ago, Wilhelm von Gloeden created an outpost in Taormina, Sicily, for our tribe. In that place, he photographed beautiful local youth, mythologizing them in the process. Like Brigadoon a century later, such a place has emerged again. In this incarnation, the outpost is in Southern California. I have taken advantage of the circumstance that is both Mecca for and home to many seriously handsome and intensely playful men. My effort has been to realize a mythic world anew. The nucleus of my latter-day Taormina has been a special place, the private domain of two men -- dear and generous friends, Del Kolve and Larry Luchtel, who now own this jewel.
Eight years ago, when I first saw this pool, my imagination was transported to another time and place. I saw the space as a re-creation of the garden and pool of an ancient Mediterranean villa or temple. This was a place where warriors and athletes came to bathe, to rest, to play, or to tryst. I saw its potential as a stage upon which what may-well-have-been could be created today.
We have played and recorded many games here -- my hosts, lover, friends, and I. We have made "art," memorialized the handsomeness of our friends, and we have enjoyed the camaraderie of one another. In this place, we have realized a potential of our tribe today, making the story of our own world as we like it.
TOM BIANCHI is a world-renowned photographer and artist who work is available through several galleries and has been published in the books Out of the Studio (St. Martin's Press, 1992), Extraordinary Friends (St. Martin's Press, 1993), Bob & Rod (St. Martin's Press, 1994) and In Defense of Beauty (Crown Publishers, 1995). He lives in Los Angeles with his life partner, Mark Prunty.
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