Love and Desire: Photoworks [Paperback]

William Ewing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

The most extraordinary visual survey of human passion ever created, Love and Desire is the long-awaited sequel to William Ewing’s influential and highly successful The Body (over 150,000 sold in the U.S. alone). Here, the internationally acclaimed photography curator brings together over 300 color and duotone images that explore human intimacy in all its forms—from the innocent sensuality of a mother and child, to the group adoration of a cultural icon, to the carnal connection between the sexes. These images—both the famous and the obscure from the past 150 years of photography—come together in a thought-provoking exploration of humankind’s deepest yearnings. Sliding easily into its translucent slipcase, this beautifully designed book offers an amazing array of compelling images at an irresistible price.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The sister book to The Body, which was also written and edited by William Ewing, Love and Desire collects a diverse range of images that attest to Ewing's belief that "all photographs are, at some level, about love, and all photographs are triggered, to varying degrees, by desire." In pursuing this theme, Ewing classifies the photographs into eight different categories--Bonds, Icons, Observation, Propositions, Tokens, Libidos, Reveries, and Obsessions. Each of these chapters begins with an essay in which Ewing draws on his deep knowledge of the history of photography to explain the relevance of the selected images. The photos themselves run a full gamut of historical imagery, from the beginning days of the medium up through contemporary art and recent commercial photography. Julia Margaret Cameron explores a family bond in her depiction of the Madonna and child, dated 1865. In 1955, Frank Horvat, in all likelihood standing on a Paris bridge, observes a couple kissing on the quay below. Helmut Newton explores obsession in the mid-1980s with his portrait of a stockinged ankle and foot in a black stiletto heel. Brassaï's 1932 portrait of Janet--in which Janet is depicted from the waist up, lying back on a bed, her eyes closed, with a look of ecstasy on her face--opens the Libidos chapter. There are hundreds of other compelling images here, and together they go far to define the complex nature of human love and desire. --Mary Wren

About the Author

William A. Ewing is a wellknown writer on the art of photography and an independent curator whose exhibitions have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and many other museums and galleries. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; First American Edition edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081182621X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811826211
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Give it to someone you love, January 27, 2000

By 

David M. Chess (Mohegan Lake, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love and Desire: Photoworks (Paperback)

This is a book to savor, to page through slowly, to share with someone you love. As long as that someone is relatively enlightened about the occasional explicit or disturbing image!

The photographs are well chosen and span a very wide range, from interesting early pornography (yes, there was hard-core even in 1855!), to romantic and abstract pictures that wouldn't shock even the dullest U.S. Senator, to Ann Mandelbaum's bizarrely erotic whatsits. Many of them are true gems, images that catch and hold the viewer in that wordless somewhere evoked by the best photographic art.

The arrangement into eight large sections gives a certain amount of structure to the book, and allows the text to cover a subset of the images at a time, but don't look for any very scholarly or systematic division. The format is too small for a coffee-table book, and the text is too general and chatty to constitute a serious critical study; but these are nits. The book is well worth buying, or giving, to anyone that takes in joy through the eyes.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A really thoughtful and beautiful collection, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Love and Desire: Photoworks (Paperback)

This is an elegant slipcased book with hundreds of art photographs which really make you think about the nature of love and desire. It's hard to put down, and the images haunt you....I loved it!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love and Desire: Photoworks (Wr. by William A. Ewing), June 11, 2002

By 

Charles Tatum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love and Desire: Photoworks (Paperback)

This four hundred page volume is a followup to the photography book entitled "The Body," which had pictures of just that.

Here, Ewing collects mostly black and white photography from the last one hundred and fifty years into the volume. He seperates them according to different "genres": Bonds, Icons, Observations, Propositions, Tokens, Libidos, Reveries, and Obsession.

With these genres, all collected under the broad "love and desire," a case could be made as to why the editor put some pictures in "Tokens," but not "Libidos." The book tries to be an overview of love in photography, but barely scratches the surface.

The good news is the collection he does have is marvelous. I read the book in one sitting, the genre intros are short, but the photos here are wonderful. Ewing provides excellent credits, letting the reader try to find more work by photographers they have never heard of.

The opening introduction essay, capsulizing the history of photography is both too long and dismissive. Ewing laments the use of the camera by the common person to take family photos, not realizing that every snapshot cannot be art.

With all the photography here, the volume is one that can be picked up and perused again and again. Despite some spotty editorial choices, I highly recommend it.

The book does contain explicit images of sex and nudity.