Who Was Mike Arlen? The British Photographer Whose Vintage Gay Magazines Are Now Collector Gold
If you've been hunting vintage British gay magazines for any length of time, you've come across Mike Arlen — even if you didn't know it. His photographs filled the pages of Inches, Zipper, Vulcan and a dozen others throughout the 70s and 80s. His self-published series, Mike Arlen's Guys, ran to fifteen volumes and is now one of the most sought-after collectibles in the British gay erotica market.
Arlen died in 2022. Since then, prices for his magazines have climbed steadily, and a 2024 Attitude feature reignited interest in his archive. If you've got copies in a cupboard, they're worth more than they were five years ago. If you're trying to buy them, they're getting harder to find.
Here's the story.
From Woman's Own to Wank Mags
Mike Arlen wasn't his real name. He was born Michael McGrath in 1935, in London, the son of a Woolwich pub landlady who dragged him into West End theatres from the age of five. By fifteen he was working as a journalist. By his twenties he was photographing for Woman's Own, She and Boyfriend — interviewing Shirley Bassey, David Bowie, Elvis, the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein. Lionel Bart was a mate. Mama Cass once turned up at his flat trying to pull one of his fashion models.
He picked up a camera almost by accident — a photographer failed to show for a showbiz shoot, and Arlen filled in. He had a knack for it. His swimwear shots sold well, and a German magazine editor asked him to shoot male nudes, which were far more publishable in Germany than in Britain at the time.
That was the door. By the late 70s he'd swapped fashion for full-on physique work, dropped the McGrath name for editorial purposes, and started building the operation that would dominate the UK market for the next two decades.
The Method: Test Shots, Real Men, and a Two-Way Mirror
Arlen's working method was famously direct. He'd cruise straight pubs in central London, hand out cards to good-looking men, and offer five free test shots — a serious incentive in the days when film and developing cost real money. They'd ring the number on the card, climb the stairs to his Earl's Court flat, and step into one of the most prolific physique studios in British history.
He shot on a Mamiya RB67 medium format camera. He kept a rail of costumes — military uniforms, sports kit, jockstraps, fetish underwear. He used rear projection in the early 80s to drop models into invented backdrops, and a kaleidoscopic prism lens for trippy multi-image effects. He'd play porn in the room to keep his models stimulated. He insisted every model was over twenty-one.
His look was distinctive: not bodybuilders, not twinks, but what he called "Real Men" — slim-to-solid, well-endowed, often straight or bisexual, dressed in the everyday fetish gear of the era. White PE kit. Rugger jocks. Jeans and boots. Military surplus. The men were the point; the costumes were dressing.
Mike Arlen's Guys: Fifteen Volumes of British Gay History
Arlen launched Mike Arlen's Guys in the 1980s — self-funded, self-designed, self-published. Fifteen issues across the run. Each one a glossy showcase of a small group of models, shot in his flat, sold through newsagents and by mail order in plain brown envelopes.
The early issues — particularly the first five — are now the most valuable. The series sat alongside Zipper (which leaned muscular), Vulcan (younger guys), HIM and Drummer (leather and fetish). Arlen contributed to most of them at various points, but his own magazine was where his vision was unfiltered.
His work also crossed the Atlantic. He shot for Inches in New York throughout the 90s and 2000s. When Taschen put together The Big Penis Book, the editor of Inches told them the first call to make was Mike Arlen — twenty-five of his models ended up in the final coffee-table edition, and the book sold so well Taschen released a 3D version.
Why He Matters Now
Two things have happened in the last few years that have pushed Mike Arlen from cult name to serious collector territory.
First, he died in 2022. The supply of Mike Arlen's Guys is now finite. No new issues. No reprints. Whatever exists is what's left.
Second, the photographer, writer and collector Peter Paul Hartnett bought up Arlen's archive — negatives, transparencies, contact sheets — and placed it with Camera Press. Attitude ran a major feature on the legacy in 2024. Curators who once dismissed Arlen as too commercial, too pornographic, too unrespectable are starting to reckon with the sheer scale and historical weight of what he produced.
He documented an underground gay Britain that almost no one else was photographing properly. Pre-HIV. Pre-internet. Pre-Grindr. The men in his pictures are real, and many of them — soldiers, builders, casual hustlers — would never have been photographed at all without him.
That's why a Volume 10, in good nick, can sell for £45 on eBay right now, with the early issues going for considerably more.
Prestine - Mike Arlen's Guys — Available at Gay Vintage UK
If you're collecting Arlen, the volumes don't always come up — and when they do, they tend to move fast. Each copy is one of one, and once it's gone it's gone.
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