Acne Paper Palais Royal has opened Rodeo, an exhibition of seventy-seven vintage photographs by Bruce of Los Angeles, curated by Vince Aletti and drawn from his private collection. The exhibition coincides with the publication of the second edition of Rodeo: Bruce of Los Angeles, edited by Aletti and published by Acne Studios.

Before Bruce Bellas became one of America’s most prolific photographers of the male nude under the name Bruce of Los Angeles, he was a chemistry teacher in Nebraska. After losing his teaching position following an arrest while photographing a nude model in California, he relocated and established his studio in 1948, becoming a defining figure of physique photography. His carefully composed portraits transformed Hollywood glamour into something cooler and sharper, quietly celebrating the male body for a largely hidden gay audience in the decades before Stonewall.

The photographs gathered in Rodeo occupy a singular place within his work. Made during travels to rodeos across Arizona, California, Oregon, Canada, and elsewhere in the American West, they reveal a photographer working beyond the stylised conventions of physique photography. Rather than directing professional models, Bellas photographed working cowboys and rodeo riders exactly as he found them, relaxed and entirely themselves. The images are quiet and observational, their spontaneity matched by formal precision. In 1974, Bellas died of a heart attack while photographing a rodeo in Banff, Alberta, making the rodeo not only a recurring subject but his final destination.

Check out some images from the exhibition below, and if you have the chance, go and see it for yourself.