Customer Reviews

Shooting Male

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Eric Schwabel's "Shooting Male" just arrived at my door. I had a million things to do but they all took a back seat to me opening the package, sitting down, and giving it a look. A cursory flip through made me immediately realize that putting those other million things on the back burner was the correct decision. This is an amazing book! Schwabel's appreciation of the male form is apparent in each and every one of these beautifully lit and shot photographs.

Matt York, one of his first models and appropriately the first image you see in the book, gives "Shooting Male" its introduction. York succinctly sums things up by saying that Schwabel "knows exactly the shot he wants and will work at it (sometimes for hours) until he gets it." This attention to detail and craftsmanship shows. In Schwabel's capable hands, the male body IS art.

If you appreciate excellent photography and the male form, "Shooting Male" should be in your book collection - in fact, it's finding a prominent location on my coffee table right now!

Eric Schwabel is a driven artist. From his studio in Venice, California he plots his images, whether they be for major advertising contracts (eg, Pepsi, TiVo, MTV, etc) or for fashion or for the more personal male forms as seen in this excellent collection titled SHOOTING MALE. And it would seem that he works with his models until he finds the exact moment that matches his vision.

The males from this collection of shooting vary from the massively muscular to the retired transgender types - he sees a model as an integral part of his search for the image planted in his mind - and the result of his work is the figure both in daylight and in nighttime, sometimes casual (albeit in a very planned manner), sometimes 'installed' with timber or spotlights or other significant props. The models can be famous (such as Johnny Hazzard on the cover and in a shower shot), athletes, fashion models, fitness models, at times the composition of the pieces feel very 'organized' but never less than interesting. He has some images, such as one that bifurcates a nude model using a massive mirror and another that places the model in front of neon lights, that defy expectations. No matter the 'stage set machinery' he uses, the final statement is one of a cohesive and integrated artistic statement - the star of which is the model so carefully chosen for that photograph.

The book opens with a brief but informative introduction by Ian Roberts, the Australian Rugby star, and gives us some insight on how Schwabel manages to work WITH his models for the fine art works as seen in this important collection. Grady Harp, February 11

Once every decade or so, a new image, or a new series of images, changes the popular conception of the male ideal. Think of the photograph of James Dean leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette in the 1950s, or the Times Square Calvin Klein underwear billboard of the 1980s. Eric Schwabel's Shooting Male may well work a similar shift in the popular imagination.
The male form has been an object of fascination since at least the 5th Century BC, when the ancient Greeks sculpted idealized images of Apollo and Heracles, or memorialized a popular athlete in marble for the ages, and that fascination has never waned. If anything, it has only increased as the ideal has been reimagined by the ancient Romans, the artists of the Renaissance, the social realists of the 20th Century, and the comic-book artists of today. Through it all, there has been one constant, and that is inextricable pairing of strength and sexuality.
Perhaps in no medium has the modern fascination with male strength and sexuality been so overtly celebrated as the photo book, beginning with the 1950s "beefcake" books showing images of body builders in classical poses. But as such photo books have become more mainstream, many photographers have tamed the raw male qualities of strength and sexuality with an overlay of sterility, a trend which reached its apogee in the form of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue.
In Shooting Male, Schwabel has stripped away this sterility and returned to raw male energy. In place of idealized images of buff boys with the sun gleaming from their pouting lips, here are real men whose sexual power is not merely hinted at, but on the surface. The men are porn stars, escorts, models, and regular guys off the streets--or in the case of Johnny Hazzard depicted on the cover, actually on the streets. And while some of the images are obviously posed (one beautiful shot in particular shows a man, contorted yet comfortable-looking, in front of a backdrop of neon lights) many of them--and the most compelling of them--are not. There is the man walking through a hallway of lockers, the aforementioned Hazzard on the street with this dog, and a series of shots that depict not only the model, but also the elements of the shoot: the boxes on which the model stands, the light-reflecting umbrella, the light meter. These latter shots take rawness to a new level: it is not only the sexual energy of the model that is undisguised, but the means of depicting it as well. Here is a power, a playfulness, and a sexuality that has become too rare in our understanding of maleness. Kudos to Schwabel for bringing it back.
If you buy only one photo book, make it this one.

Photographer Eric Schwabel is one of the best in his field, as demonstrated in his first book, Shooting Male. From Johnny Hazard on the cover to the final behind-the-scenes shower shot, the images in this collection are powerful, captivating and sexy. Schwabel manages to capture stunning men at their most beautiful moment; luckily for us, he likes to share.

You've likely seen Schwabel's work before; he's been featured in photography books (<link|http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3861878925?ie=UTF8&tag=quelquechosec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3861878925|Night Visions> from Bruno Gmunder, Male Nude Next from Rizzoli, and Undressed to Thrill, Blue Books) and has shot dozens of magazine covers and editorials as well as ad campaigns for Pepsi, TiVo and MTV. His style- slightly saturated with plenty of glamour- is never overly processed. In fact, he doesn't like Photoshop, and makes such incredible use of light that retouching is unnecessary. Of course this only adds to the `hot factor,' because it leaves his models natural and (almost) approachable.

The men in Shooting Male come from such diverse worlds as sports (Australian rugby god Ian Roberts, who also provides an introduction), fashion, fitness, and adult films (the book's cover), and the settings, style, and themes of the images are just as varied. From classically `tasteful' to slightly raunchy, his work runs the gamut, but is always engaging, interesting and unique; he truly has a style- and resulting look- that is all his own.

As a coffee table book, Shooting Male would be difficult to beat and makes an excellent addition to a collection of male photography. The muscular, sexy men- in various stages of undress- and the way in which Schwabel shoots them are hypnotic in their beauty; he's a true visionary and this book expresses that perfectly.

So, I bought this book a few months ago, and I observed friends (from high profile and celebrities to school teacers) coming at our house being so intrigued by the way Mr. Schwabel sees and captures humans.
So I bought a couple of more books to give as presents. Bingo! Very much appreciated!
I believe this man/artist has a brilliant career and future ahead of him.
I found out he has a web site as well, and I am sure we will contact him in the future for some work request.
In spite of his age, Mr. Schwabel has all the foundations of the "big ones" from the past!
I am so glad I got to buy this book! Highly recommended!