rebel youth & jeans photos by karlheinz weinberger (via grant)

To step into the world of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger is to fall down a rabbit hole of such a specific homoerotic fashion obsession that to crawl out would be a missed opportunity.

Zurich-based KHW was a lifelong factory worker by trade, but by nature he was a portrait photographer who zoned in on his erotic obsessions, consistently male, who changed along with fashion itself from teenagers to rockers to bikers as the decades progressed. In the early ’60s KHW began photographing the Halbstark, aka the Half Strong, and these are the images with which he is most closely identified as a photographer. The Halbstark were a tribe of denim-wearing, rock and roll fanatics who took the cliché of the new American phenomenon, “the teenager,” and turned it on its head with sly, deviant rock ‘n’ roll fashion rampant with homo-erotic overtones.

KHW’s was a world populated by feral, sly, outsiders, disdained by their conservative Swiss parents who fashioned their own “gangs” and wore their own “colors” consisting of uniquely customized jeans and leathers that proclaimed their counterculture allegiance. Wearing precious denim and leather, they were walking shrines to their American heroes with giant belt buckles emblazoned with pictures of Elvis and James Dean and Brando. They slung heavy industrial chains over their cowboy shirts and striped tees.

The male Halbstark replaced the zippers of their jeans with bolts and laced them with chains. The women teased their hair into ratty towers and downplayed their femininity with denim jackets and scratchy mohair sweaters. The Halbstark obsessed over and fetishized their trans-Atlantic icons as Weinberger obsessed and fetishized over them. As an observer and recorder of a weird, shifting youth culture, KHW’s images are fascinating. As a record of a twisted, crazy fashion movement they are priceless. READ THE FULL STORY HERE @ HUFFPOST GAY

Jen Brill presents Karlheinz Weinberger Jeans from Swiss Institute on Vimeo.

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May 5, 2013 | Categories: for reals, FUCK me RAW, LOVES, Photography, POP CULTURE, style/clothing | Leave A Comment »