| JIM FRENCH was born on July 14, 1932. At the age of eighteen, he enrolled in the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, where he studied drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography until 1954. He enlisted with the United States Army in 1955 and was honorably discharged in 1957. After moving to New York in 1958, he started a successful career as a fashion illustrator. Under the name Arion, he began to draw male erotica in the early 1960s. He also started to produce photographs of male nudes and used the names Luger and Rip Colt in subsequent years. Jim French is best known for creating Colt Studio, which specialized in publishing calendars, magazines, and photogaphs of hyper-masculine models that provided revolutionary icons for gay male culture in the 1970s and 1980s. His first fine art photography compilation, entitled Man, was published in 1972. His other books include The Colt Album, Another Man, The Art of Jim French, Jim French Men, Opus Deorum, The Art of the Male Nude, masc., and Like a Moth to a Flame. The artist retired in 2003. |