The latest issue of Elska magazine, a project that spotlights queer men in cities all over the world, travelled to Melbourne, dubbed Australia’s “most liberal” metropolis. Inside this new issue, readers will find a combination of intimate photography and personal storytelling highlighting gay life in the city.

With its 180 pages, ‘Elska Melbourne’ introduces 16 ordinary men from the local queer community, photographing them in their city and their homes. The issue reveals a diverse bunch of beautiful bodies, accompanied by the stories of each of these men, enabling the reader to get to know them on a more personal level.

Among the stories included in this latest edition are John H’s experience of gay liberation in the early 1970s; Luke B’s account of growing up gay in rural Australia and what it was like to be ‘the only gay in the village’; Zhi Z’s observation of how travel helped him understand more about himself and Jayke F’s description of a day at the nude beach, and how it brought him to face his insecurities and find new appreciation for his own body through the diversity of others.

Speaking about this latest edition of the magazine, Elska editor and chief photographer Liam Campbell said: “Elska Melbourne is our third Australian adventure, following previous issues made in Perth and Sydney.

“Even though those other Aussie editions proved popular, we also got a lot of complaints from people asking why we didn’t shoot Melbourne instead,” Campbell continued. “At first I thought such messages came from a place of arrogance, but after being told over and over that Melbourne is Australia’s queerest, most liberal, and artsy city, I knew we had to see it for ourselves.”

“From the moment I arrived in Melbourne I knew they were right,” he added. “Elska’s photographic concept has always been to shoot people with spontaneity and without plans or expectations, which results in a combination of indoor and outdoor pics as well as clothed and unclothed photos.

“Everything is up to each subject, but Melbourne marks the first time in our nine-year history that everyone we met opted to bare all for their photos,” the photographer said. “That makes Elska Melbourne, our forty-eighth issue, the first to be all naked! And I think that proves how queer, liberal and arty this place is.”

‘Elska Melbourne’ is available both in print format and in a downloadable e-version at www.elskamagazine.com. In addition, the issue is accompanied by the ‘Elska Ekstra Melbourne’ ezine, containing 500 pages of outtakes and behind-the-scenes tales.