Peter Berlin: Icon

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With his trademark Dutchboy haircut, Tom of Finland physique, and oh-so-tight trousers, Peter Berlin was the poster boy for the hedonistic and sexually-liberated 1970s. Jim Tushinski’s fascinating, sexy, and ultimately touching documentary, That Man: Peter Berlin, traces Berlin's story over the past 40 years, from his birth in wartime Germany to his current life in San Francisco, and shows the human being behind the icon.

Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family. Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene (28 December 1942) is a German-American photographer, artist, filmmaker, clothing designer/sewer, and model best known by his stage name Peter Berlin. In the early to mid-1970s. [1] Almost 50 years after his uncompromising films and daring self-portraits made him a defining gay sex symbol of the ’70s, Peter Berlin can’t quite fathom why anyone would still be interested in his work. Yet he’s also bothered that the rest of the world hasn’t remade itself in his image—and that’s just one of the many contradictions that make Berlin so fascinating. He’s an introvert known for his exhibitionism; a gifted photographer whose only subject is himself; a porn star who doesn’t much care for sex; and a man who responded to the artifices that so many gay men constructed to hide their true selves by creating an even more exaggerated sexual and stylistic persona.

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More naked young men join the photo shoot; they adore Berlin as he stands on a podium like a statue while the camera continues to flash. “I want to take pictures of them watching you,” the cameraman exclaims. “I want my camera to hold you all. To capture every one of you in its fine lens.” The climax of the scene has no penetrative sex or ejaculation. It ends with a slideshow of imagery hitting a rapid-fire pace. The erotic thrust of the scene is not traditional, not solely based on men’s enjoyment of each other’s bodies. It favors the camera’s actions and outcomes over penetrative sex or climax. Much more than just a simple pornographic film, through the lens of history, That Boy can now be understood as a photosexual manifesto. Berlin’s cultural contributions were so many decades ahead of his time and so unique—not fitting cleanly into either the world of art or the world of pornography—that understanding their relevance and impact requires the invention of a new terminology. I propose the word photosexuality and aim to make the case that Berlin was the first acclaimed male photosexual and the leading pioneer of its practice. As I see it, photosexuality is a contemporary mainstream sexuality in which erotic self-portraiture—the documentation of one’s own sex acts and the private and public distribution of those images—is intertwined so completely with one’s sex life that it becomes as important as the sex acts themselves and, in some cases, even more important. Of course, even then, the relationship between sex and the camera was far from new. Since its inception, the camera had been used to document the beauty and wonderment of the naked human form. What was new about Peter’s approach was that it was an independent enterprise. He wasn’t a muse for another artist or a model for a pornographer; nor was he a sex symbol produced by a film studio, like Garbo, Brando, or Monroe. He didn’t wait for an adoring and powerful benefactor to hand him the capitalist machinery of star production. As an out gay man, such tools were only available to his counterparts who had agreed to remain closeted for the purpose of becoming cultural icons. Berlin, on the other hand, valued himself and his sexuality with such militant pride that he took his identity into his own hands and became his own muse. “I wanted to turn myself into the type of man I wished I would see on the streets,” he has said as a way of explaining his style. That Man: Peter Berlin had its world premiere at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival and was an official selection of over 65 film festivals, including the Seattle, Chicago, Palm Springs, Rio, and Durban International Film Festivals. In January 2006, the documentary opened theatrically to great acclaim. A Special Edition DVD was released by Water Bearer Films. In addition, That Man: Peter Berlin is available for streaming on Vimeo On Demand and Fandor.I never had sex in any of those places. I went for being seen and seen. I'm so shy that you would never have seen me having sex. Sex was for me a very intimate, private thing. Peter Berlin grew up in Berlin in the 1940s and 1950s. He studied photography and his first job was working for the fashion photography journal, VIP Shaukel. This “ordinary life,” however, did not last long. A Dorian Gray-type character, Berlin once caught sight of his own reflection in a shop window in Paris; mistaking his own face for that of another and believed he had found true love. As directed by Chapman, Ryan Walter and Bobby Goodrich are well cast and truly terrific in those roles, and the other actors score as notable figures in Glenn/Divine's life, like quirky auteur Waters, excitable manager Bernard Jay, and various boy toys angling for their place in the sun. There's ultimately too much angst and screaming, but Divine/Intervention does a strong job of probing Divine's dark side and exploring the real feelings behind the false lashes. Berlin’s photographic project is arguably closer to performance art, in that the act of cruising in his elaborate getups was the point of his ambitious pursuits. The expertly composed and printed photographs, gorgeous art objects in and of themselves, are ultimately records of his sexually pointed happenings.