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At Ease: Navy Men of World War II
edited by Evan Bachner
Abrams Press
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As Allan Berube discusses in his great book Coming Out Under Fire, the huge geographic, social, and psychological shifts that occurred during and after World War II formed the foundation of gay and lesbian communities-- and politics-- in the post-war years. From 1941 to the end of the war four years later, millions of women and men were wrenched from their ordinary lives across America and thrown together-- often under the most adverse and horrendous conditions of war-- and forced to make sense of their lives and emotions. It is overstating it a little-- but not that much-- to say that World War II and the homosocial conditions of the lives of those involved in the war effort were among the predominant reasons for the growth of queer communities and identities after the war.

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Berube argues this convincingly, but his analysis feels counterintuitive.

Now, At Ease: Navy Men of World War II-- a collection of photographs that were commissioned by the US Navy and taken under the direction of famed photographer Edward Steichen-- gives us a clear, often stunning, look at the lives of Navy men during World War II.

Just leafing through At Ease-- which measures 11x11 inches and is printed on high-quality, high-definition paper-- is a treat. Here are 146 large portraits of Navy men at work, play, and just relaxing. There are photos of men lying on the decks of their air force carriers, reading, horsing around in their beds, reading letters, loading large gun barrels, waiting on their mess lines, sunbathing, showering, shaving, showing off their tattoos, scanning the skies for enemy planes, wrestling, and receiving gunnery training. Often the men are shirtless, sometimes wearing shorts, and while they are never posing in provocative ways, the sexuality of the photos is astonishing, powered by the homosocial world in which almost all of these men seem to be at ease-- that is, relatively unaware of the male competition and the one-upmanship so often engendered by the socialization of heterosexuality.

No one would ever suggest that these men are all "gay"-- whatever that might mean in this context-- but certainly these are not photos of men who are fearful of showing one another affection, who are shy about their feelings (or their bodies), or who are frightened of being open and emotional with other men.

What is so amazing here is that Steichen and his photographers-- none of whom are known to be gay-- have captured a world in which the interplay between maleness and sexuality seems completely easy and natural. At first glance, the photos look completely contemporary-- some are almost identical to images by Bruce Weber or Tom Bianchi-- but when you continue to look carefully, it's clear that what we now consider one of the primary "gay aesthetics" from the 1980s actually finds its basis in wartime photographs.

It is not that photos like this were never viewed before. But by collecting them in one place, Bachner reinvents visually how we might think about World War II and sexuality. At Ease is not simply the perfect companion piece to Allan Berube's Coming Out Under Fire, but it is, in and of itself, one of the most important and vital documentations of gay history to be published this decade.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com