Customer Reviews

Nighthawks

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

 

 

Ohm Phanphiroj's first book was a relative breakthrough in photography of the male nude. His technique was imitative of grainy Polaroids (although it was taken digitally), with lush but dark colors. His models were largely no different than most: Tall, rangy, beautiful, coiffed to the limit, affecting a lazy sensuality in down-at-the-mouth settings. "Look, ma! I'm so beautiful, but I'm in this roach-infested motel!"

Nonetheless, Phanphiroj's initial work was interesting because he never employed the "jocks on rocks" style favored by Steven Underhill, Tom Bianchi, Howard Roffman, and others.

"Night Hawks," unfortunately, doesn't quite go beyond his two previous books. His style remains firmly static, his models may well have appeared in the first two books for all that they look alike, and his work seems more derivative of photographers like Michael Huhn ("Peep Show"), Slava Mogutin ("NYC Go-Go") and David "Old Reliable" Hurles ("Speeding") -- except that all these other photographers were doing this type of work years ago.

Phanphiroj has incredible talent, there's no denying that. But as an artist, he's not growing. Not changing. Not seeking out different ways of implementing his vision.

If all the reader were looking for was beautiful, naked Calvin Klein models wearing dingy jeans and lolling around in cheap digs, this book would rate "5 stars." As art, as visionary photography, as something different and grasping and seeking -- not just different from other artists but from Phanphiroj's own prior work -- it is only so-so.

Edward Hopper's 1942 painting 'Nighthawks', a lonely night restaurant on the corner of two New York streets, is a work that has long symbolized the single, disenfranchised people who happen to continue their living systems late into the night: sadness, despondency and boredom are barely discerned by the artificial light of Hopper's painting.

Whether or not Ohm Phanphiroj had this painting in mind as he photographed the young males of this monograph, only he would know. But each of the pages of color photographs here suggests a similar vulnerable, ennui-filled atmosphere we all associate with the words Night Hawks. These young men appear in all manner of dress and undress, each seems to be held in position by the photographers artistic concept, and each seems at home in the somewhat squalid environments in which they are captured. The models vary greatly in physical appeal and that seems to be what Phanphiroj is addressing. What these models do in the bleakness of night illuminated by garish light sources (if illuminated at all) is left to the viewer's imagination. This monograph appears more a study of lonely 'workers' rather than an excursion into sensual areas. Though not as strong as his previous monographs, Night Hawks maintains a grit and seediness that makes us try to understand the histories behind each model - and that is what makes this photographer so successful at seducing the viewer. Grady Harp, March 11