[PHOTOS] Meet the men of Munich

Elska is a project centered on traveling around the world, meeting a selection of everyday local guys, and introducing their city and their lives to readers through honest photography and personal stories. Below, photographer Liam Campbell shares exclusively with GayCities a selection of photos and behind-the-scenes commentary about some of the men he met in Munich, Germany, for the latest issue.

Alonso N Q

The arrival of our forty-seventh issue, Elska Munich, marked a long overdue return to Germany, a country we’d not featured since our second issue, Elska Berlin, first published in November 2015. Over the years, our German readership has become our second-biggest base (following the USA), so I wanted to pay tribute to them, but choosing which city to focus on was almost impossible.

One of my first steps in choosing a city was to consult our big list of future ‘models’, where we compile the contact details of people who say they’d like to be in Elska if we ever come to their city. One of the guys on that list was Alonso, a native of Costa Rica who’d been living in Munich to study dance. His enthusiasm to take part in Elska was perhaps the greatest of all the guys on our list, and that won me over and made me choose Munich.

When I finally met Alonso, that enthusiasm continued, and we had such a fun and characterful session together. Since then he’s been in touch multiple times to say how great it would be to do another shoot one day. I’d absolutely down for that, but not in Munich. I can’t repeat cities, so we’ll just have to wait to see where Alonso ends up next, and maybe follow him there.

Luis A G P

One of the other Münchners who got in touch via our ‘be in Elska’ contact form was a lad named Andi. He was super excited about the prospect of a Munich issue, but he didn’t quite feel ready to participate. However, he did have a slew of friends he wanted to recommend, and Luis was one of them.

However, Andi’s recommendations came with a sort of agenda. He explained that his favorite aspect of Elska was the inclusion of all types of men, and he hoped that our issue in his city would reflect its diversity. Honestly, I assumed that Munich would be very, very white (or full of “kartoffels,” as Andi called them, meaning “potatoes”), but that’s really not the case at all. This is reflected in large part by Andi’s involvement. Luis, for example, is a German of Mexican origin, and he makes for an issue that is overall more international than ethnically German.

By the way, I haven’t spoken to Andi since the publication of Elska Munich, but I wonder how he’ll react when he sees his friend Luis in the buff—and not just Luis but also the two other guys in this series who are Andi’s friends. Awkward!

Timothy H and Flavio A

Couples are pretty rare in Elska, but they are always a delight—well, not so much a delight to shoot as a delight to see. Photographing one person is difficult enough, but trying to make two people look good in one photo, especially when you’re trying to shoot in a documentary style rather than with poses, is tough stuff!

That’s probably why my shoot with the couple Timothy and Flavio was the longest shoot I did in Munich, resulting in a camera roll of nearly a thousand frames (the vast majority of which were rubbish, with one of them blinking or something). The shoot lasted so long because the couple kept changing moods. That resulted from my mistake in booking them for a Sunday afternoon, particularly the Sunday following a house party they hosted that lasted until the wee hours that morning. Luis was half-asleep when we began, and Timothy was half-asleep by the time we ended! But in the middle, there was a sweet spot and some very sweet photos of a couple absolutely in love. Definitely worth the work of having to edit a thousand photos!

Dat N

My first morning in Munich was absolutely dreadful in terms of weather but glorious in terms of heart. I chose to visit Munich in January in the hopes of finding snow because I adore a wintry landscape in photos (ultimately, the covers of the two volumes of Elska Munich both reveal this dream realized). However, the snow didn’t arrive until the second day; the first day was cold and pouring rain, and that was the day that included Dat, my first Münchner subject.

I could tell that Dat was disappointed with the weather, but unfortunately, I didn’t have any free time in my schedule to move him (and I didn’t know, of course, that it wouldn’t rain every day). However, we made the best of things, and the results show some very sweet and memorable images, particularly a shot where Dat stands laughing in Marienplatz as his umbrella blows inside out.

Personally, I don’t mind rain, but what does get me down is the idea that the person I’m shooting isn’t having a good time or might be disappointed. Dat’s humor kept my spirits up though, and at the end of the shoot, his kindness sent me to new heights. Just before I left him, I asked him to tell me the correct German for “I’d like to buy a weekly transport card.” In response, he took me to the nearest station, bought the ticket for me, and paid for it as well! I tried to protest, but he insisted. This was just the first of many examples of Bavarian kindness I experienced here.

Christoph H

Occasionally, I get nervous before a photo shoot, even intimidated. That was the case with Christoph, even though he’d be the 755th subject I’d photographed for my Elska project. Perhaps his incredible handsomeness intimidated me, though this is something you quickly have to get used to in Germany! More likely, I was nervous because he was a jock, and all sorts of bad memories from P.E. in school rained down on me. Was Christoph going to be one of those bullies who still tormented me in my dreams?

Spoiler: no! Christoph was charming! He taught me another lesson: not to judge people before meeting them. So even though I had been scared to hear that he was a footballer, part of the Streetboys, the first gay football club to play in Germany’s professional league, he totally turned me around. And the story he contributed for Elska Munich, where he explains how joining this gay team turned his life around, made me want to put a footie kit on and run to the pitch. Then I remembered how terrible I was at sports, but I could still dream, especially about the locker rooms after a match!

Filip S

I was genuinely shocked at how much I liked Munich. Partly, this was because so many people had warned me against it, arguing that it was dull, full of arrogant people, and conservative. Certainly, I was never bored. Everyone was nothing but kind to me, and the fact that 90% of the men I met here chose to bare all in their photoshoots must prove it’s not a conservative place.

This Munich loveliness made me overflow with energy, so I photographed eighteen people here when my original plan was just twelve. One of those people I added to my roster for a very last-minute shoot was Filip S. He became a highlight of my trip, not only because he was a nice and very hot guy but because of how exciting it was to do such a spontaneous meeting. It’s inspired me to change the direction of Elska and make issues full of people met on the spot in a city rather than scheduled a month before arriving, which is how I’ve been making Elska since 2015. Stay tuned for the results, which will begin in 2025 with our upcoming fiftieth issue.

The new made-in-Germany issue, “Elska Munich,” is printed into two separate volumes; both are available in a print format and an electronic version. A companion e-zine called “Elska Ekstra Munich” is also available and contains hundreds of pages of bonus outtakes, behind-the-scenes tales, and even more local boys and stories.