[citation needed] He founded Pohlmann Press that same year, and began publishing the work of photographers of the male nude.
The company published the work of Lorenzo Gomez, Roy Dean, David Vance, Christopher Makos, Joe Ziolkowski, John Phillips, Catherine McIntyre, Nina Glaser, Patrick Sarfati, Dale O'Dell and Chuck Smith, and focused on Gerhart's own work.
In 1995, Gerhart created the Naked Gallery—an art gallery but also a publisher of a catalog that specializes in the works of Pohlmann Press, artistic male and female nude imagery, books, calendars, lithographs, and original signed limited edition photographic prints.
The book was extremely well received, and its cover image of a nude man's back and buttocks as he appears to dive off a rocky cliff became iconic.
[1] The following year, the German publisher Bruno Gmuender issued a pocket-sized, hardcover collection of Gerhart's works titled Edition Euros 13.
Consequently, Gerhart's photography exhibits the knowledge and skill levels of a manual photographer with a wide range of experience.
A standard motif which appears routinely and repetitively throughout his entire career is a model, flexing his muscles, standing on a sandstone boulder or rocky outcropping.
Gerhart's work indicates a willingness to challenge social norms and prevailing notions of taste in stronger terms than many of the more tame, if more mainstream, photographers with whom he is often compared.