Customer Reviews

Costa (Stonewall Inn)

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"With their refreshing sense of serendipity and their use of contrast between subject and background, Bill Costa's photographs are among the most visually arresting male nudes ever seen. Eschewing the standard art aesthetic of the nude, Costa establishes a sense of shared intimacy between his models and the viewer thorugh his photographs. His images are at once powerful and familiar, erotically charged without abandoning a sense of the commonplace."

With 45 plates, a frontispiece and an overleaf, photographer Bill Costa in his pocket-sized volume proves that good and beautiful things can come in small packages. These men, all shot in black and white and most in natural light, have perfect bodies and are shot in urban industrial setting, in front of brick walls and in abandoned buildings, etc. In Costa's own words: "I find beauty in the peeling paint of old walls and doors and the decay of old wood." In the list of plates the artist also often inclues quotations from the works of the French writer Jean Genet, a welcome addition to the photos.

My favorites: the photograph of the humpy man in white underwear shot from the rear which is on the dust cover as well as well as the overleaf. I'm certain that using this photograph for the cover sold copies of this little volume. If I am not mistaken he is also the model named Bobby on page 22. "The Bath II" (plate 42) is erotic beyond description as is the model in plate 41. (Check out the quotation from Genet accompanying this shot.) Plate 32 has the following Genet quote: "He is no longer such pure marble, but human flesh." Enough said. Plates 11 and 12 "The Holy Trinity" are in the tradition of Duane Michals in that the same model is photographed in similar poses, wearing briefs and then naked. Notice the beautiful gray tones of what appear to be three white shirts hanging on the wall above the model. Finally in Plate 16 ("Jeune Homme") the young model apes the pose in the famous painting known around the world, a copy of which hangs above his head.

If you are a collector of male erotic photography, you should own this little volume.

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