Roberts is appreciative of the newfound interest in his work. No longer considered merely a physique photographer, he is now regarded as a serious artist. His images have achieved a level of critical success he never expected.

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In Frontiers Magazine, for example, Jack Shamama described Roberts's "lush colorful photos" as creating "a gay fantasia-- a picturesque version of '60s and '70s sunny California, replete with confidently smiling all-American boys diving into and getting out of the same swimming pools David Hockney . . . was painting at the same time."

The New Yorker review of Roberts's 2003 ClampArt show in New York, "The Boys of Summer," commented on his "witty, buoyant Technicolor pictures," which capture "all the giddy delights of being young during summertime."

In a review of a 2005 exhibit of Roberts's images at Los Angeles's Erotic Museum, Lauren Collins observed that the photographs are not merely beautiful and erotic, but also subversive: "Roberts uses his photos to suggest that the California male was a model of manhood for generations of Americans, yet he deliberately turns this assumption on its head by focusing on forms of gay sexual expression."

A writer in Hero Magazine put Roberts's work in perspective: "Before Bruce Weber, Tom Bianchi and Herb Ritts, there was Mel Roberts!"

Roberts's photography is now represented in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Palm Springs. Private collectors around the world have paid thousands of dollars for his brilliantly colored, large-format prints. One of the most avid, Sir Elton John, acquired almost sixty images for his personal collection.

Now in his eighties, Roberts is healthy and energetic, but he is not tempted to pick up his camera again. A brief return to do a fashion shoot for Flaunt magazine was fun, but ultimately less than satisfying artistically. There was no way to recreate the relationships and joie de vivre that lie at the heart of Roberts's photographs from the 1960s and 1970s.

As much as they serve as documents of a bygone era, Roberts's images are also an enduring expression of a life well lived.

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