The Photography of Joseph Lally

“My name is Joseph Lally. I am a photographer, writer and filmmaker and I would add: explorer into the mystery of existence.” So Lally described himself in a 2018 interview for “Uvenio Fashion Talk.” We’re told he passed away earlier this year. Though Playgirl was unable to independently verify the news, we wanted to pay tribute to this one-of-a-kind photographer and to celebrate the boys the lensed with poetic candor.

Readers may know him best for his Yearbook Fanzine publications and for the models he often shot in and out of their underwear. No fancy setups, no traditional lighting, just a flash and the immediacy it afforded him. “I have a fondness for capturing beauty, like a butterfly collection,” he told The Advocate in 2010. “Beauty under glass and unobtainable (…) Beauty with dramatic tension (…) Beauty with an edge.” Lally acknowledged his debt to Luchino Visconti, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, but it’s the French “nouvelle vague” –and Godard in particular– that informed his aesthetic the most –its run-and-gun style of filming, its mix of realism (authenticity), experimentation and subjectivity. Check out Lally’s NY Diary, published by Client Magazine x Yearbook Fanzine: 302 pages, 36 young male models and their “beauty with an edge.”