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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE *November 3, 2000

eveningsout

A reminder of summer's warmth

These books are the best of the best in male nude photography

by Kaizaad Kotwal

As the frigid frosts of fall arrive, if you need something to hang on to as a reminder of the sultry heat of the blazing sun, then curl up with a good photography book and luxuriate in their images of beautiful men.

Books of photography centered around the male body began to gain ground in the late 1980s, when modeling photographers like Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber unleashed their work on the mainstream public. Today, books of photography abound, and while there are many of them on the market there are those that separate the men from the boys.

Some publishers are really making a mark in the art of the male body. Prime among them are German publisher Bruno Gmunder and American publishing houses St. Martin's Press, FotoFactory Press and Pohlman Press.

One of the nicest photo books in recent

Two photos from Mel Roberts' California Boys.

memory is Bruno Gmunder's publication of Raymond Vino. Vino is a New York photographer whose debut compilation bodes a great promise in the future. Most of the images in this book feature gorgeous men (so what's new?) bathed in golden light that gives the images a warmth that jumps out from the pages.

From the solo portraits to the twosomes and group pictures, Vino's men embody a quiet strength and softer sensitivity at the same time. The cover photo is an epitome of this duality as the model gazes out at us boldly and yet seems introspective, lost in the environment he inhabits. The Blue Door Collection has produced an excellent 2001 calendar of Vino's most enduring images (www.bluedoorcollection.com).

Two other recent books from Bruno Gmunder worth getting are Howard Roffman's Jagged Youth and Steven Underhill's Boy Next Door. Both Underhill (www.stevenunderhill.com) and Roffman have had previous successes with Gmunder, and these books only cement their reputations as solid photographers.

Both books focus predominantly on youth. Underhill's boys epitomize the allAmerican male, young, athletic and with a

palpable optimism in each photo.

Roffman's boys have a slightly rougher edge, as the title suggests. Roffman writes that, "they are formed, yet unformed, precious stones with jagged edges. They tempt me, they taunt me, arouse me, entertain me. They dazzle my eyes with the brilliant flame of youth, and I capture them in midair, over and over again, stealing moments in their exhilarating leap from boy to man.”

For those aficionados of pornography (Gmunder astutely balances art with porn) there are two collections of images of male superstars from the veritable powerhouses of Bel Ami and Falcon. The images are not of sex, but rather celebrate the objects of many men's dreams in overblown Technicolor.

These are like those school yearbooksexcept that no one ever posed naked in my yearbook.

Pohlman has just issued three gorgeous coffee-table books that are absolutely lush

from cover to cover. Light Embodied by Chuck Smith is more about light than it is about men. Smith uses light to bathe his models in, quite literally, and the result is a series of images that are like time-captured moments from someone's deepest memories.

Smith's collection, unlike any other book discussed here, is fantastically expressionistic with some images even bordering on the abstract. Here the viewer's eye traverses the

page, not unlike with a Monet, where one can indulge in a tiny corner of the image or exalt in the whole picture.

Pohlman's Dios Latino (Latin Gods) is perhaps the first, and much overdue compilation of Hispanic men. The book is a rich collection of images in brilliant blues and burnt oranges, making for some incredibly striking and powerful images.

There are no frontal nudes in this book and that makes these images all the more erotic. The focus is on the god-like strength and beauty of these bronze toned men. Lorenzo Gomez places a lot of his models,

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embodiments of strength, youth and vitality, in environments which are decrepit, decaying and dilapidated. The visual contradiction of subject and environment is as potent as the power of these men.

Body Conscious by Klaus Gerhart is Pohlman's final offering for this season. Gerhart is an accomplished and prolific artist and in many of his images he isn't afraid to capture and celebrate the unbridled sensuality and uninhibited sexuality of his subjects.

Gerhart's men seem to want to break the bounds of the two-dimensional page and leap towards three-dimensionality. Gerhart's most beautiful images are those where his models exalt in the natural beauty of a beach or barren landscape. Gerhart also does these wonderful images where he focuses in on

one part of his model's body, from a long, toned limb to an ample behind. In these zoomed-in, still lifes, the sensuality is palpable and yet the images reach into the abstract.

St. Martin's Press has two new books that are must-haves in any photo buff's collection. The first, Beach by David Morgan (www.dmny.com) is a wonderful celebration of summer, sun and sand.

Morgan, a commercial photographer in New York for the past three decades, turns his lens to a group of men at play on Fire Island. The images exude fun but they also capture a lot of love-love between the men and love that Morgan seems to have for his subjects.

In the preface, Morgan writes that, "Existing as we do on the fringe of society, we gather, as is fitting, at the very edge of the land just to be ourselves. It seems we own the beach, make up new rules, and exist a bit more comfortably.”

Some of the images towards the end of the book have a great sense of humor, and this in photography is rare and difficult to capture.

Man: Photographs of the Male Nude from St. Martin's is a collection of the works of four artists-Trevor Watson, Tony Butcher, Za-Hazzanani, and Toni Catany.

This is the most diverse collection of photography here from the subjects to the artists themselves. Many of Watson's models and all of Butcher's men are AfricanAmerican, and it is refreshing to see a different body and cultural aesthetic. Most male photography books are heavily geared towards white men, so it's nice to see a more diverse spectrum of men captured.

Most interesting is the presence of ZaHazzanani in this compilation. Not only is

this one of the few female photographers working with the male nude, but she grew up in a strict Muslim household.

"I g

I grew up in a culture where you rarely saw a female nude, let alone a male," ZaHazzanani writes. "I thought it was very wrong. Women have every right to experience and enjoy male nudity. Men represent half the population yet you see very few of them nude, and they're always portrayed as hard, boring and macho, never showing any feelings or expression. I believe men have an extreme passion, sensitivity and beauty— maybe even more so than women--but they can still be very male, and it's my mission to express that."

Another detail in her work is that she is not afraid to frame the hirsute male, a rarity in most male photography where there is this unhealthy and unnatural obsession with the depilated and smooth body.

Toni Catany is from Barcelona, Spain, and like Chuck Smith's Light Embodied, Catany focuses on the interaction of light and flesh. Catany's models are stretched and contorted on the photographic plane, and whether this is agony or ecstasy is in the beholder's eye.

Finally there is Mel Roberts's California Boys from FotoFactory. In the past few years there has been a cultural shift towards celebrating the retro.

The sixties and seventies are back with a vengeance, and the aesthetic that was mocked in its own time is now haute couture and tres chic. Roberts was one of the most prolific and prominent photographers of the male youth of the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which these images were not only rare but considered subversive to the mainstream status quo. Images of men in those decades, celebrating their passion and sexuality, were embodiments of forbidden dreams and faraway fantasies.

Roberts is a native of Toledo, and was blacklisted for his work in Hollywood. In the 1970s his house was raided several times, with much of his work being confiscated. That this book is published today is not only a testimony to an entirely different aesthetic of the male form, but is also a testament to the survival spirit in artists like Roberts.

This is an extremely elegant and different type of book. It is nostalgia and the present all rolled into one. Most of all this collection, unlike the others, is wrapped in innocence the naïveté of an era before AIDS and "don't ask, don't tell."

To write about photography is not only difficult but somewhat oxymoronic. After all, photography literally means "writing with light." Hence, these images are best experienced in the flesh. The above books are the best of the best, and definitely worth checking out.

The female nude has always seemed fair game for consumption and exploitation. Western attitudes towards the male nude have been conflicting at best, and downright hostile at worst. To borrow a phrase from the other gender, "We've come a long way, baby!"