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Apr 12 2023
David Hurles, Gay Erotic Photography Legend Old Reliable, Dies @ 78 Comments (0)

Old-reliable-david-hurles-nude-gay-shirtless-boyculture(All images © David Hurles/Old Reliable)

David Hurles, who under the studio name Old Reliable created some of the most iconic gay male imagery of the '70s and '80s while pursing his highly personal vision of erotic nirvana, died Wednesday in a West Coast care facility after a long illness and a short battle with cancer.

He was 78.

His longtime friend Jack Fritscher, an invaluable well of information about the early days of gay porn, publishing and photography, reports:

We were dear friends for 47 years. David's photos & world-famous “Old Reliable” reality videos caused a sensation that changed the Gay Gaze as to what gay men actually like in race, class, and homomasculinity beyond blond twinkies. We were one-time housemates, longtime video collaborators, & writing partners at Drummer.

You can read Jack's entire profile of Hurles here.

David Randolph Hurles was born September 12, 1944, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like quite a few other physique photographers and artists — Blade, Walter “Champion” Kundzicz and more — he started his career in adult entertainment as a model himself in the '60s. He posed for H. Lynn Womack's Guild Press, for whom he started working as a photographer by 1968.

Mentored by Bob Mizer at Athletic Model Guild, he was shooting Super-8 porn loops by the '70s, forming a one-man company that he ran from a P.O. Box.

But as his close friend and caregiver Dian Hanson observes, Hurles was never in it for the money.

Hurles had a unique aesthetic. Mizer cherished masculine beauty and much of gay porn was devoted to twinks who looked like they could get ya in trouble, but Old Reliable fetishized just the masculine and dangerous aspects of the two sides of the coin. His work is identifiable from a mile away, a collection of seedy, weedy men who looked like they arrived for their shoots fresh from prison — or on their way there.

David-hurles-young-old-reliable-gay-boyfriend-boycultureHurles with the boyfriend whose suicide broke his heart.

Hanson points out that Hurles captured his images for personal reasons, as part of his fetishization of straight criminals. Hanson, who manages Hurles's work and has possession of many unseen diaries and interviews, says he pursued these men as a way of keeping his heart safe from deeper gay romantic entanglements following the suicide of an early boyfriend who leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Death's not generally erotic, okay? However, there are certain occasions where the fantasy of death isn't going too far, see? I could usually get off. The only way to test-drive an audiotape was to masturbate to it.” — David Hurles, unpublished Q&A by Dian Hanson

This origin story helps to explain why Hurles's vision was so authentic; what he shot was not a chic, it was not cynically market-driven and it was not even in pursuit of art.

Regardless of what drove Hurles, his work was slightly ahead of its time; he ran into resistance from mainstream gay-porn mags at first. However, he quickly attracted a devoted following after publishing in Drummer and in Fritscher's Man2Man Quarterly.

David-hurles outcast-boycultureHurles with one of his books in 2010. (Image via Facebook)

By 1990, Hurles's films, stills, audio tapes and catalogues were becoming collector's items among admirers who related to his output. But that same year, during a boxing shoot (he also did highly coveted wrestling scenes), he was accidentally kicked in the head by a model. The resulting damage to his vision made photography more of a challenge, but one he undertook until 2002, when his cameras were stolen.

A 2008 stroke left Hurles permanently disabled. He spent his time after that in constant care, including being watched over by Hanson. During this period, Hurles enjoyed being read letters from admirers and approved the publication of books.

Truly a giant in his field.

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