Naked Rooms [Hardcover]

Peter Gorman (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

Powerful, playful and often completely exposed, Gorman’s female nudes give new meaning to the phrase ‘up close & personal.’ Prepare to discover what real women are really up to when they’re getting naked in their own rooms. An erotic tour de force.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Photographer Peter Gorman’s approach to the female nude is not only unique, it’s unforgettable. If you’re a fan of artistic photography, or certainly of erotic photography, as I am, you might come across one of Gorman’s photos at Nerve, Salon, or in the Australian fine art magazine Black + White and instantly recall if you’ve been exposed to his work before. The images are never less than startling, provocative; sometimes strangely claustrophobic, but always memorable.

This is Gorman’s follow-up to his much praised monograph, Naked in Apartment 7 (Goliath, 2001), the black & white collection where Gorman managed to capture the often overpowering erotic presence of model after model in the tight confines of his tiny New York apartment. This time, Gorman takes us deeper into the intimate realm of real women, by traveling throughout the five boroughs of New York City to photograph his models where they live.

Now, in full color, Gorman exposes us to Wall Street brokers, college students, law enforcement investigators, commercial pilots, actresses, artists, dancers; women as varied as the places they call home. Yet they share one thing in common: a willingness to uncover their bodies for the photographer and be photographed naked in their own rooms.

From film to digital; from the comfort of his home to the unpredictability of other people’s apartments; from the stationary confines of strobe lighting to the mobility of one hand-held flash. These are a few of the significant shifts in direction Naked Rooms undertakes and the shifts have led to some decidedly entertaining new terrains.

As a rule, Gorman prefers to use models who are unfamiliar to him in order to resist creating preconceived stories for his photographs. For the photo sessions in Naked Rooms, he also asked each model to resist the urge to clean her apartment prior to the shoot to keep the atmosphere as un-staged as possible. The result is that each photo has managed to capture a complex personal tableau in addition to an intimacy that’s sometimes as disquieting as it is erotic.

"I never know before hand," Gorman states, "how a model is going to behave in front of the camera, the level of exhibitionism that’s going to emerge. Sometimes the models who are the most shy and retiring are the ones who really come alive when the camera is on them. For the Naked Rooms sessions, since I was only using one hand-held flash, I basically told each model that I was going to chase her around her apartment with my camera. I had to have confidence that, as unpredictable as that was, somehow it was all going to work." And here are the results of just how well that idea came together. Prepare to discover what real women are really up to when they’re getting naked in their own rooms.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: Goliath Books (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3936709025
• ISBN-13: 978-3936709025
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,678,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As a groundbreaking multi-media producer, author, and editor, Marilyn Jaye Lewis has been interviewed in numerous magazines, on syndicated radio, Internet radio, cable television, and Canadian syndicated television.

Her upcoming novels include Twilight of the Immortal, A Killing on Mercy Road, and How Sweet it Is. Her multi-media memoir, Manhattan Mon Amour will include 10 of her original songs from the 1980s with a companion MP3 collection titled Recipes from Hell's Kitchen.

She was the founder of the Erotic Authors Association, the first American organization to honor literary excellence in the erotic genre, and was its Executive Director from 2001 - 2006.

Ms. Lewis' collection of memoirs, Entangled Lives: Memoirs of 7 Top Erotica Writers (Alyson Books), upon publication was a front page feature on SMITHmagazine.net and was nominated for a 2007 Lambda Literary Award.

As editor, Lewis's anthologies include the controversial Zowie! It's Yaoi! Western Girls Write Hot Stories of Boys' Love (Running Press), and Stirring Up A Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic, (Running Press) -- nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes for Short Fiction and featuring short fiction by Selma Blair, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood, among many others.

Her popular erotic romance novels include When Hearts Collide (2003) and When the Night Stood Still (2004) and were distributed exclusively by Barnes & Noble nationwide.

She is the author of the critically acclaimed modern erotic fiction classic, Neptune & Surf. Called "a sensational debut" by The Guardian newspaper in London, Neptune & Surf was also selected as one of The Guardian 's Top Ten Summer Reads for 1999. Hailed by the American Book Review as "reminiscent of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in America", Neptune & Surf won Ms. Lewis London's Erotic Writer of the Year award for 2001.

She was co-editor of the international best-selling art book, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography (Constable UK). Her erotic short stories and novellas have appeared in numerous anthologies in the United States and Europe and have won many citations and awards, including the New Century Writers Award and finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition.

In the late 1990's, as president of Marilyn's Room, Inc., Marilyn was executive producer on numerous spoken word recordings for fiction authors and poets, and she sponsored and/or produced live video and audio web casts of spoken word performances in conjunction with Broadcast.com and Pseudo.com. As web mistress, her erotic multi-media sites won numerous awards, in particular inclusion in Playboy's Online Hall of Fame for her groundbreaking erotic fiction web site Other-Rooms.com.

As head writer for RomAntics Inc., her work was highlighted on HBO, won an AVN award for Best Adult CD ROM game of 1998, and received critical recognition in Entertainment Weekly, the popular American entertainment magazine.

Marilyn Jaye Lewis is represented by Helen Breitwieser of Cornerstone Literary Inc. in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars [a] masterpiece, April 7, 2003

By 

Photopro "Mike" (purcellville, va United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Naked Rooms (Hardcover)

This book is really really good. I didn't know what to think when I got it in the mail. It was my first Gorman experience. First off, these are the woman that we see everyday of our lives. The woman that walk past us on the street. They are all in private living situations. The privace of their own homes, or so it seems. Some of the models are clothed, some not, some half undressed, but what is nice is they are all very very different. There are unattractive, very attractive models and models of all races.

Gorman captures these woman in the situations that we all go though during the week. Photos of woman in the shower, eating, sitting, even masterbating. This is a very [explicit] book. Period. I loved it. After buying this book, I am going off to get his first book "Naked in Apartment 7".

The only flaw I found in this book was its size. It is about the size of a trade paperback book. Pretty small. So some of the pictures you have to strain to see, and some that take up two pages, you will find the model right smack in the crease of the book, ruining the picture. Other than that small complaint I have, I loved the book. Add this to you collection.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, September 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Naked Rooms (Hardcover)

Gorman has demonstrated that he is a top-notch photographer of nudes and erotic nudes in the controlled environment of his apartment. I enjoyed his stylized black-and-white work in his previous "Naked" book. However, this book suffers from its format (the pages are too small) and the quality of pictures. Admittedly, Gorman's purpose was to give his subjects a raw, in-the-moment appearance. Unfortunately, despite Gorman's use of a variety of cameras, too many of these photos have the appearance of rushed, out-of-focus snapshots taken on a cheap instant camera.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Courageous NEW Direction for Peter Gorman, March 19, 2004

By 

Michelle7 "Editor of Michelle7(dot)com" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Naked Rooms (Hardcover)

Peter Gorman shot to fame in 2001 with the publication of his first book, Naked in Apartment 7, where he photographed, in black & white, a range of nude females within the confines of his New York apartment. He changes course here in Naked Rooms, shooting entirely in color and on location in the home of each of his models, who range from stock brokers to commercial pilots to law enforcement professionals. There is also a sense of movement in much of this work, blurred movements, action, and we know some of this is from Peter's approach to his photo-sessions where he instructed his subjects to roam around the house with him "chasing" them. That's key to what makes this such an exciting body of work, there's very little sense that anything was staged or even prepped for the photo-session. It's fast. It's quick. It's raw. It's a kinetic journey into the private chambers of these attractive, young women .. and that they are naked makes it all the sweeter. This is a great book, but it's an even more interesting study of an art photographer who's wholly unafraid to take chances ... and that's VERY cool!