Elska, Issue 51 – Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Elska is a bi-monthly male photography and culture art-zine on 130 pages of beautifully stroke-able matte paper. Each issue is shot in a different city with men from that city, including not only their photographs but their stories too. It’s a sort of cross between a quasi-intellectual queer pin-up and a sort of sexy anthropology journal.

In this issue:

This fifty-first issue in our series marks our fourth visit to Latin America and our first to Argentina. People have been asking us to feature Buenos Aires for years, and we’re over the moon to finally present it.

Inside Elska Buenos Aires, readers will be able to follow our nine-day sojourn in the city, explored via meeting a variety of ordinary local gay and queer men. Elska writer and chief photographer Liam Campbell conducted photoshoots with each of them and then wrote extensive diaries about the time he shared with them. This photography and narrative is the basis for this book.

Buenos Aires is an elegant and charming city, and so were the men, but most of all, they were incredibly warm. Indeed, they were so warm that this rather shy, awkward, gay British traveller often couldn’t cope with them. This clash is revealed in this book, and so is Liam’s journey to accept Argentinian warmth and learn to give some of it back in return.

Photographically, Elska Buenos Aires reveals just how uninhibited yet classy that Porteño men are. Everyone opted to strip off for their photoshoots, making this one of Elska’s nakedest ever issues. Some of them got a little frisky as well, despite the photographer’s clumsy timidity. While much of the imagery here is a feast for hungry eyes, even more is revealed in the text, letting imaginations continue through the story of each elskan (aka subject / participant). This book isn’t all about sex and romance though — there’s also a bit of tango dancing, anti-Milei talk, and some big meat as well (the kind available at a parrilla, of course).

‘Elska Buenos Aires’ features ten chapters, dedicated to the following local elskans: Juli R, Damian G, Eric D, Max M, Joaquin F, Augusto C C, Nicolás F, Nicolás P, and Dani A.