Customer Reviews

Love and Desire: Photoworks

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

I have never truly enjoyed photography as art, but this book captured my attention with it's raw passion and the sexually charged intrigue of each photo. Sex's taboo is broken in this book, in an artful collection of sex from the past to current.

Maybe too big for any one book, this included. Ewing has selected a few hundred photos from nearly 150 years of photographic art to represent his topic. Romantic love, in family, marriage, and courting are all well represented here. Ewing also presents many samples of carnal love, including Nan Goldin's reminder that self-love can be carnal as well. He presents Victorian images of children's innocence, which work well with (or aginast) Sally Mann's pictures on similar topics. With or without eros, many of these pictures present pure, voluptuous sensuality - "Runner Beans" (p.315) may be the richest (and most humorous) example in this category.

Ewing also uses contrast to show love. Myers's 1898 photo, (p.60) demonstrates parental affection with a chill edge. That could have been a close moment between father and child. That sharp, narrow divide separating their faces represents a much wider distance between the two, echoed in the tentative, almost unwilling touch of the adult's hand.

In the end, though, I found this a weaker assemblage than Ewing's "The Body." As broad as it is, the topic of the human figure is much narrower than this book's theme, so it's an easier topic to represent. Perhaps because love and desire mean so many different things, this collection came across as unfocussed and spotty. This collection is good, but fell short of its ambitions.

//wiredweird

this collection of photos isn't quite as good as his selection for the body. but there are many good photographs in it. the text of the chapters is well written and informative. some of the placement of the photos is confusing. all in all, a good book to have.