Home / Artists / Dennis Forbes (Fred Bisonnes)

DENNIS FORBES
(FRED BISONNES)

AMERICAN, b. 1940

Fred Bisonnes (Dennis Forbes) (American, b. 1940). Peter Berlin, San Francisco, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Offered in AFTER DARK on 20 August 2026.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1940, Forbes was educated in public schools there, graduating from Drake University in 1962 with a BA in English. Following a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy, and his graduate studies, he worked for the magazine publisher Meredith Corporation. During this time, he also worked as the Assistant Director of Publications at the University of Iowa, where he also did graduate work in both Studio Art and Art History.

Cover of Vector magazine (left); Cover of The Advocate (right). Courtesy of Dennis Forbes.

In 1972, Forbes relocated to San Francisco, where he worked as a freelance ghost writer, graphic designer, and photographer, in 1974 becoming art director for Vector (monthly newsstand publication of the Society for Individual Rights); and 1975-1976 as art director of The Advocate, guiding its evolution from a Los Angeles bar newspaper to a biweekly tabloid-format national gay-news magazine. In that capacity he contributed numerous photos and illustrations, including montages and pencil and ink renderings, with a focus on caricatures of gay personalities both historical and contemporary.

Cover of The Falcon File magazine (left); Cover of Chevron (right). Courtesy of Dennis Forbes.

Following a stint as the production-stills photographer for Falcon Studios (and as the designer of its print advertising and brochures), Forbes launched a series of unique magazine-format picture publications featuring combinations of his male-nude photography, homoerotic illustrations and short erotic fiction. With the colophons Western Man and Lobo, these were printed and distributed by Le Salon, also based in San Francisco. Eighteen months and 12 titles later, he ceased producing the Western Man/Lobo publications and returned to shooting beefcake nudes and production stills for Falcon, in addition to his work designing the Studios’ brochures and print advertising.

Cover of Advocate Men. Courtesy of Dennis Forbes.

In 1984, Liberation Publications Inc. (LPI, parent company of The Advocate) commissioned Forbes to singlehandedly create the monthly gay newsstand/subscription magazine Advocate Men. Using the anagram Fred Bisonnes, he served as its staff photographer until 1989; and during those five years he photographed scores of male models, as well as produced numerous illustrations in different styles and mediums, including caricatures of gay pornstars to accompany video reviews. In 1989, Forbes/Bisonnes retired as both beefcake photographer and erotica illustrator, to pursue another, quite different interest.

Cover of Kmt: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt. Courtesy of Dennis Forbes.

That was Kmt, a quarterly newsstand / subscriptions journal he created which focused exclusively on ancient Egypt and modern Egyptology, wherein his photography featured erections of a very different sort! After 32 years and 132 issues, in 2022 Forbes ceased publication of his journal and finally retired again at age 82. He lives today on a wooded mountainside near Asheville, NC, and continues writing gay-themed fiction and creating montage and assemblage art as Fred Bisonnes.

Notes

Bisonnes, Fred. Blue: Homoerotic Illustration. Dancing Faun Press, 2011.

Forbes, Dennis. Leaving a Mark on Gay Liberation of the 1970s & ‘80s. Dancing Fau Press, 2020.

Forbes, Dennis. Bare Essentials, Memoirs of Homoeroticist Fred Bisonnes: Book 1, Narrative; Book 2, Gallery. Dancing Faun Press, 2021.

Contributors

Dennis Forbes (aka Fred Bisonnes)
Photographer, Illustrator, Homoeroticist