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Grady Harp wrote on 05/21/2010:

Bruno Gmünder Verlag Gmbh is a highly regarded publisher of photographic essays, taking more risks than most other production facilities in this country. This very impressive book surveys contemporary photographers whose works emphasize the male nude and contains sixty seven artists from the well known to the emerging and the result is a hefty volume of both black and white and full color images that offers as wide a spectrum of 'visions' as any book to date.

After a Foreword by the always readable and well-informed David Leddick, the book unfolds in sections based solely on the individual photographers fortunate enough to be included in this panorama. The pleasure of this particular book on the male nude is the variety: images range from the hilarious costumed fantasies, to the brutally erotic, to the quietly sensual, to the 'model look', to the beefcake stance. Included in the collection are the very well known photographers Tom Bianchi, Kristen Bjorn, Ed Freeman, Steven Underhill and Kingdom 19 and the works selected form their large repertoires are fine choices indeed.

But it is the pleasure of meeting new ideas from lesser-known photographers that is encouraging: David Vance, Joe Ziolkowski, Roger Nguyen, Troy Phillips are but a few. The artists are from around the world and for those of us familiar with the works of such photographers as Adam Raphael, Norm Yip, Eric Olson, and John Sonsini among others seem like a much-missed exclusion. But not every artist can be included in a volume even of this scope, and the book stands as a first class collection of the many ways the male nude can be celebrated. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp

Dennis Copertino Jr wrote on 01/04/2010:

I love this book but only because me (Dennis Copertino) and my friend Brandon Propst are in it