by MATTHEW HAYS

Philip Lewis still remembers the sense of wonder he felt when he first came across the work of physique photographer Alan B. Stone.

“I was doing some work for the Quebec Gay Archives,” says the seasoned film publicist. “And they had acquired Stone’s entire collection after his death in 1992. He had shot hundreds and hundreds of male physique photos.”

Working for the Quebec Gay Archives meant Lewis met up with one of its founders, academic and historian Ross Higgins. The two pored over the work of Stone, who had a broad range as a photographer. “Montreal was a centre for male physique photography in the ’50s and ’60s,” Lewis notes. “But Stone shot so many things, as well as male physique. He travelled across the country and did a great deal of travel photography as well.”

Lewis approached filmmaker Jean-François Monette (Anatomy of Desire, Take Out) about co-directing a documentary about Stone together. The result, What Stone Saw, is a 44-minute documentary that recreates the life of the photographer through his work and testimonials from those who knew him.

“Stone really kept quite a low profile,” says Lewis. “He was a pioneer in male physique photography, working from a basement studio in a West Island home. What struck us was the sheer range of his work, the fact that he’d done so many different kinds of photography so beautifully.”

Monette says Stone was key in creating some of the most vibrant male physique photography he’s ever seen. “Many of his shots were taken out in nature,” Monette says. “There’s something very Canadiana about it—the boys in the woods. There’s also a lot of humour in his photographs.”

With the help of Higgins—who wrote the doc’s script—Monette and Lewis managed to track down various people who knew Stone, including his sister, artist Peter Flinsch and even some who modelled for Stone in the ’60s. “One of the male physique models is married now, with children, and he works for a bank in Montreal,” says Monette. “But he was very happy to be interviewed about doing the photography all those years ago.”

While Stone shot hundreds of photos of men almost nude, he was a man of his generation, rarely if ever discussing his sexual orientation. While it’s clear he was gay, Monette and Lewis found that he’d lived that part of his life extremely privately—ironic, given Stone’s huge contribution to gay erotic photography. “Only one of the models we interviewed is gay,” says Lewis. “The rest are straight. At the time, this was all done under the radar.”

Lending their analysis to Stone’s work are Higgins and author and film scholar Tom Waugh, both experts in gay male erotica. Produced by Lisa Cochrane of Amerimage-Spectra, What Stone Saw will air in the spring on Bravo in English and on Canal D in its French version.