Pool Light [Hardcover]

Beverly Ornstein (Editor), Howard Schatz (Photographer), Owen Edwards (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1999

An acclaimed photographer presents an extraordinary new body of work that further reveals his appreciation of the human form in water.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Graphis Inc; First Edition edition (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188800147X
• ISBN-13: 978-1888001471
• Product Dimensions: 13.9 x 10.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone's Favorite Photo Book - Artful Nudes, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pool Light (Hardcover)

I have over 50 photo books in my collection, but this one gets the most attention. Everyone seems to linger over the many beautiful images in this book, even after quickly flipping through other photo books by great masters. Howard Schatz has taken some beautiful vibrantly colored (and some black and white) artistic photos underwater, even though most other photographers get ugly photos with a horrible blue cast when they take underwater shots. The monumental effort necessary to create these great images is documented in this book and is well worth the read too.

By the way, it is interesting to note that some people I know who are offended even by what many would consider artistic nudes are surprisingly not offended by the nudes in this book. So, if you tend to be offended by artistic nudes, perhaps you may find this book opens your eyes to the beauty of the nude as an art form. I suspect with this book that Howard Schatz may have made a significant contribution to the acceptance of nudes by the general public.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Human form has no better friend, December 28, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pool Light (Hardcover)

As a photographer, choreographer and dancer myself, I tend to be a tough sell on books which hype a photographer's mastery of the human form, particularly where dance or dancers are concerned. But such is my appreciation, and awe, of what Schatz has accomplished in his water studies that I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw that he had published "Pool Light."

Less a book about dancers than about the incredible beauty of the human body, "Pool Light," transcends the very things which frustrate us as movers. In this book, the photographer and his models make us believe in both flight and fantasy. They inspire us to see shape unihibited by gravity or earthly confines. And they succeed in taking nudity, within a photographic environment, out of the controversial realms of "indecency" and restoring it to art in the way the great painters have seen it.

Technically, the work is nothing short of a marvel. Great photography, like any great art, deceives the viewer into believing that what they see is so easy, so natural, as to be routinely simple. In "Pool Light," we see none of the sweat, none of the frustration and aches (and presumably water-logged participants), which must certainly have gone into each image. Instead, we are invited simply to see that most classic of forms, and ancient of muses, the human figure, shown, through the most contemporary of techniques, in a way which celebrates both even as it transcends our sense of their limitations.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every page of this book is fascinating, October 31, 2004

By 

J. Lizzi (Costa Mesa, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pool Light (Hardcover)

Whereas "Water Dance" took off from an experiment, "Pool Light" appears to be the result of a complete mastery of this unique form of photography which combines beautiful bodies with dazzling fluid effects. Every image in this book is a sight to behold, combining the beauty and grace of the human body with the imagination and emotion brought forth by an underwater stage.

Photographer Howard Schatz has advanced beyond "Water Dance" to perfect his art of underwater photography through a more effective use of the pool's characteristics to portray motion, suspend animation, and produce some of the most fantastic images of the human body. Every one of the 120+ photos is worth a long look. The bodies of the dancers, models and swimmers are not all there is to admire, but take a look at how Mr. Schatz uses the surface of the pool as a mirror or as a screen to either reflect or shield portions of the physique. Every aspect of each image seems to be perfectly in place, even air bubbles and ripples of the pool's surface, which add an interesting quality of depth and lighting.

As a nice complement to the images, there are several pages of commentary which describe the artists' (photographer, collaborators and models) inspiration and efforts, as well as some of what goes into making a book like this. For example, it's noted how Mr. Schatz prepares his "liquid studio" to be more tolerable to the subjects, such as using ozonated (not chlorinated) water, and matching the pool's pH balance to that of human tears so that models can keep their eyes open longer. Interesting reading indeed.

"Pool Light" is one of my favorite photography books of all time, and I would recommend it to anyone.