You probably won’t know the name Paul Rodriguez but you will absolutely, definitely, 100% recognise the image he co-created in the summer of 1986. The image is called L’Enfant but most people know it simply as ‘Man and Baby’ – a black and white poster from Athena of a topless muscular young white man cradling a baby against his denim-clad leg.
The word iconic is much over-used but in this case it applies – it is probably one of the best-selling images of all time. It certainly became the best-selling poster in British history, with a massive cultural impact across the USA and Europe. It totally embodied the developing concept of the ‘new man’ – masculine but sensitive. You could even trust him with a baby!
Art director Paul Rodriguez commissioned the image from photographer Spencer Rowell, one of many successful collaborations between the pair. A less well known fact about the man who had the idea for the ‘man and baby’ image is that Paul Rodriguez was gay (shocker!).
Homoeroticism on the high street
Paul was an illustrator in his own right, and before the success of L’Enfant he had produced a series of air-brushed images for Athena, almost exclusively of men. These were very particular men: tanned, slim, athletic, with short dark hair and a moustache. These days, given the homoerotic context, we would refer to them as clones. The clone was an American look from the 1970–80s, which emphasised a masculine aesthetic, and as the name suggests it made everyone look very similar.
What was remarkable about these images is that they were for sale as posters / cards / postcards in your local Athena shop. Amidst all the other images, such as the female tennis player showing a cheeky rear cheek (produced by Athena in 1977), were these illustrations of ‘tached men. They were easy to overlook, but to those of a certain persuasion they were beacons of desire in an otherwise bland world. Well, as a young man coming to terms with the fact that I desired other men, that’s how it felt for me.
Having images of identifiably gay men in such a mainstream setting was a revelation. Apart from classic black and white images of athletes and boxers, men had not been seen quite like this before.
The sensuality of sport
There were definite themes to his work. Sport was obviously a popular one as it allowed him to show a lot of flesh without it appearing inappropriate. You could also show men close to each other in a way that wouldn’t be unexpected. I mean it would be impractical to have sportsmen so close in real life, but that’s just artistic licence. Yes, that’s what it is.
The backgrounds never detract from the figures, but Paul included symbolism in some of them. One figure is exercising in front of a white wall with a thin blue check, evoking the tiles in changing rooms and showers – places where men get naked.
The discus throwers have a massive triangle behind them – grey but with definite hints of pink in it. A pink triangle is a reference to the symbol used by the Nazis to indicate homosexuals in concentration camps. Why he put these two things together in that one image will take someone smarter than me to figure out.
My personal connection
Before I had accepted the fact that I was gay, I was given the postcard below by a fellow college student, who was very open about having a crush on me. The feeling was not reciprocated (sorry P.), but that postcard became very precious to me. In a pre-internet age, images of men like this were hard to access, and it connected me to of a world that spoke of such desires without judgement. It was so important to me that I still have it today.
The postcard, entitled Never Forget, surfaced during a clear out I was having a couple of years ago. It brought back waves of emotion: confusion, anxiety, but most clearly a youthful sense of longing and desire. I didn’t look like the men in the image but I wanted that closeness, that touch, an intimacy I had not yet experienced.
Who was Paul Rodriguez?
When the notion took me to find out more about the artist who had created this powerful image, I assumed a quick search on the internet would answer all my questions. That was not the case. Paul Rodriguez has become a detail in the Man and Baby origin story, most probably because he was gay and died of AIDS in the 1990s. Interest since then has focused on the two models and the impact of that image on them. There was even a documentary made about them in 2004: The Model, the Poster and 3,000 Women (IMDB).
Photographer Spencer Rowell has said that Paul chose the models for L’Enfant. He was “looking for certain attributes, but he also had a knack for spotting a generic look in a model, a timeless, universal appeal.”
The majority of the information available about Paul is on the website manandbaby.uk created by Spencer Rowell. He is most definitely not just a detail there, and Spencer has allowed me to share this photograph of them together on a shoot in the Caribbean around 1991. It would be their last.
Paul Rodriguez was born on 18 April 1961, and died in Ealing in London on 18 December 1992, aged just 31. In October 2025 I met up with Spencer to talk about Paul.
Spencer on Paul
“We met around ’82, I believe at the same time he became art director for Athena. He was an attractive man, very skinny, tall. You would know he was gay, just from his posture and his voice. He was quite camp.
“I’d see him maybe every three months. We’d get together and do some work. And then he phoned up one day and said: ‘I’ve got some money to commission stuff, do you want to do something?’
“We did mainly males, not exclusively, but I was known for shooting males. That was quite unusual. I think the assumption was I was gay. We’d usually do a big casting over a day or two, and over the next few days we’d probably shoot a few images. He loved the castings because he got to see all these wonderful, beautiful looking men.
“I used to have long hair, earrings, swanning about being arty. I was very interested in style with an interesting wardrobe. But it shows how naive I was. I said to Paul once, your handkerchief’s falling out of your back pocket. And he looked at me in this way that Paul always did: This is important to what I’m saying to the world, Spencer! I still have no idea…
“He got this idea to have a man holding a baby. It’s not the sort of thing I would want to do particularly. The contact sheet came back with just one image on it, so I got a big print made, sent it off, literally didn’t think anything of it. And then the royalty cheques started coming in. They were reprinting every month! Obviously, you can’t make an icon like that. It’s an intersection of a lot of unconscious forces, and it was the image for the time.
“Going back to the beginning of our relationship, Paul said: ‘I’d like to introduce my boyfriend and maybe he could do makeup and stuff.’ He was a lovely chap but he wasn’t suitable. I said quietly to Paul, a few days later: ‘Do you mind if I use this person I’ve always been using?’ And Paul said: ‘Nah, of course, that’s no problem at all.’ It must have been a long time after, I don’t know why he came up, but I mentioned this chap [to Paul]. He said: ‘Oh, no, he died.’
“Everyone in my industry didn’t know how to talk about it, didn’t know how to work with it, didn’t know how to feel about it. It was just a fucking awful time. Paul didn’t talk about it. So eventually I did. I’d always be very inquisitive and not really scared to ask questions, especially of Paul, because he was very open and honest and approachable. He wasn’t defensive in any way, he was such a gentle man.
“I said: ‘Have you had a test?’ He said: ‘Well, I’ve made the decision that if I think about it more than 50% of the time, I’m going to go and have a test.’ And we never spoke about it after that.
“Then we were talking about this new fantastic trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was quite an expensive trip, for probably 10 days. Athena backed it all. I was going off shooting the dolphins, shooting the models in the swimming pool, because we were going to strip it all together afterwards. Normally the art director would be on the boat standing right beside you. He wasn’t.
“I’d go back to the hotel room and he’d be perky enough, then I would just glance across and his dressing table was just full of pill bottles. That’s the image I remember, sad image I have in my head, of him sitting on the end of the bed trying to be upbeat, but actually he was asleep all the day. He was in darkness.
“We came back from that trip. I was doing the retouching, the postproduction, which again was very expensive. Paul was overseeing stuff but he was tired. He’d come around for an hour and then go home. He’d always use his best hour of the day with me.
“Anyway, it was normal not to talk for a while. I called him at his home to see how he’s doing and someone else picked the phone up. It was his boyfriend I believe. And that’s the last… he’d gone.
“When I went round there, his mum was there, I just fucking lost it. His mum was very gentle. I think she was a Buddhist.
“The Order of service [at the funeral] was a very flash one, like a little cataloguey thing, lots of his pictures in it. He designed it. Typical Paul, all designed before his death. A lovely picture on the front cover of him in Thailand, not when he was with me, but because his dad was Thai, I think.
“It’s a bit of a blur, but I was asked to speak and I did. I remember going up to his coffin and I had my hand on the coffin… He was fucking awful at timekeeping. He was just a hasta mañana kinda guy. My gag at the end was, I’m surprised he made it to his funeral on time. Everybody got it, I think. If you knew Paul…”
40 years later
To commemorate this year being 40 years since L’Enfant rocked the world, Spencer Rowell and Athena have organised an exhibition in Ramsgate. There is a panel dedicated to the memory of Paul Rodriguez.
