Customer Reviews

Castro

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Since Joel-Peter Witkin wrote an introduction to Nick Castro's book CASTRO published in 1990, we would expect photographs on the edge; and that is precisely what we get. Among the 90 or so black and white images included here are photographs of the BDSM community (but often with a gender-bending whimsical touch), shots that make a political statement, some that have an eerie grotesqueness about them and others that are pure fantasy. Mr. Castro (can that really be his birth name?) brings an intelligence to these selections that elevate them above what we see so often in fetish photography. They engage the viewer and convince him to view them again and again, something that good photography always does.

Some of my favorites in no particular order: "False F--k" (p. 71), "Dead Election" (p. 104)-- the models are members of Act-Up LA and are wearing skull masks with the first President Bush as the leader of the pack-- "Perils of Paul" (page 101 where a nude model is lying across railroad tracks), "976-Seer" (page 99), "Black Rodeo" (p. 73-- the cowboy is wearing women's leather spike-heeled boots), the very funny "Penis Envy" on page 53, the whimsical "Shopping Bag Adonis" on page 49, The take-off on the movie "Querelle" spelled here with an additional "E" (page 25), and finally two photographs that come close to the kind of erotic shots we see in a lot of magazines: "Scott Back" and Scott Front" (pages 36 and 37).

A shot of the model/photographer Peter Berlin is included, along with two photographs of a model with a disability worthy of Witkin himself and one that Castro either borrowed from Herb Ritts or the other way around, depending on when Ritts shot his model, "Trog!" (page 35).

All in all, a good collection.