From September, the exquisite Acne Paper Palais Royal gallery will present Rodeo, an exhibition of seventy-seven vintage photographs by Bruce of Los Angeles. Curated by New York-based critic and curator Vince Aletti, the exhibition will bring together works from Aletti’s personal collection and coincides with the publication of the second edition of Rodeo: Bruce of Los Angeles, edited by Aletti and published by Acne Studios.

Known professionally as Bruce of Los Angeles, Bruce Bellas (1909–1974) occupies a significant place in the history of twentieth-century photography. Before establishing himself as one of the leading figures of American physique photography, Bruce Bellas (his real name) worked as a high school chemistry teacher in Nebraska. After relocating to Southern California in the late 1940s, he opened a studio in Los Angeles where he developed a prolific photographic practice centred on the male nude. Produced during a period when homosexuality remained criminalised and heavily censored in the United States, his photographs circulated discreetly under the guise of promoting health, bodybuilding and athleticism, becoming an important visual record for queer audiences before the Stonewall era.

Bellas developed a distinctive visual language that combined the polished aesthetics of Hollywood studio portraiture with a restrained, masculine sensibility. His carefully composed images emphasised light, form and physical presence, influencing later generations of photographers including Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber.

The photographs presented in Rodeo reveal another dimension of Bellas’s practice. Made during journeys to rodeos across Arizona, California, Oregon, Canada and throughout the American West, the series departs from the carefully staged conventions of physique photography. Rather than photographing professional models, Bellas turned his camera towards working cowboys and rodeo competitors, capturing them in moments of rest and preparation as well as after competition.

While the cowboy had long served as an idealised figure within American visual culture and physique photography, Bellas’s images are rooted in observation rather than performance. His subjects appear in their everyday surroundings, photographed with an understated intimacy that avoids theatricality while maintaining a remarkable formal precision. The resulting portraits offer a nuanced record of masculinity, documenting both the physical demands of rodeo life and the quiet confidence of those who lived it.

Although these photographs were originally published alongside Bellas’s better-known physique studies, they have increasingly come to be regarded as among his most personal and accomplished works. They also hold particular significance within his career: Bellas died of a heart attack in 1974 while photographing a rodeo in Banff, Alberta, making the subject not only a recurring motif but also the final chapter of his photographic practice.

The exhibition is curated by Vince Aletti, whose writing has shaped the discourse around photography for more than four decades. A longtime contributor to Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Artforum, Modern Painters and Vogue Italia, Aletti currently writes for The New Yorker, Aperture and Harper’s Bazaar Italia. His publication The Drawer was awarded Photo Book of the Year at Paris Photo in 2023, while Physique, drawn from his own photography collection, was published in 2025.

The show will be on view from 3 September to 7 October 2026.