INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH

PHOTOGRAPHER’S FOREWORD
“WATER FROM THE MOON”
(Ancient Japanese Saying Defining Something One Can Never Have)

On the title page of his dog-eared Billy Budd, Ryan wrote, in the most legible scribble of all his random notes, what must have come to him, suddenly, as a simple, illuminating, uninterrupted, crystal line vision of sexual elegance.

That first night when I first saw Kick, I recognized one of life’s long shots at the Perfect Affirmation.

He was a man.

He had a man’s strength and fragility, a man’s grace and intensity, a man’s joy, and a man’s passion. He seemed my last chance to celebrate the changes in me as growth. He was so fully a man, he was an Angel of Light.

To him I could say nothing but Yes.

One thing, you see, I know for sure; Nature very rarely puts it all together: looks, bearing, voice, appeal, smile, intelligence, artfulness, accomplishment, strength, kindness. That’s what I looked for all my life: the chance to say Yes to a man like that.

I look in men for nothing more than that affirmative something that grabs you and won’t let you look away. Maintaining my full self, to have some plenty to offer back in balance, I’ve looked for some man who fills in the appropriate existential blanks, for some man to be the way a man is supposed to be, for some man to keep on keeping on with, in all the evolving variations of friendship and fraternity, beyond the first night’s encounter.

I’ve looked for that to happen: to be able to say Yes inside myself when a good, clean glow of absolute trust settles over the world.

Honest manliness is never half-revealed. When it’s there, it’s all right there in front of you. The hardest thing to be in the world today is a man.

Jack Fritscher, in Jack Fritscher’s American Men, quoted from his novel Some Dance to Remember

Editor’s Note: The Black & White cover of Jack Fritscher’s American Men appeared in color on the cover of Powerplay magazine #10, May 1996, Joseph Bean, editor.
To sample Jack Fritscher’s written essay on photography, see his article “When Sex Meets Violence: The 1982 Leathersex Nude Photographs of Jim Wygler.” Powerplay #10, May 1996. Also see the nonfiction book written by Jack Fritscher in 1994 titled Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera

Jack Fritscher’s AMERICAN MEN
Full Text Reviews

Published in 1995, 62 pages.

Published by Editions Aubrey Walter GMP Publishers Ltd. P.O. Box 247 London N6 4BW, England 181-341-7818 VOX 181-341-7467 FAX

This collection world copyright 1995 Editions Aubrey Walter. Individual images world copyright 1995 Jack Fritscher. Introduction world copyright 1995 Edward Lucie-Smith.

ISBN 0-85449 197 X A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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