Sirens [Turtleback]

Marco Glaviano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 1997

One of the most successful fashion photographers of our time offers a tantalizing collection of sensational images, featuring some of the most beautiful women in the world today. 450 color photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Remember the Sirens, those nymphs who lured mariners to their deaths with sweet, irresistible singing? Marco Glaviano's nymphs lure not with song, but with sunlight on glistening (scantily clad) flesh, and poses that flaunt the female form in all its glory. The fashion photographer, perhaps best known for his Cindy Crawford and Paulina Porizkova swimsuit calendars, has assembled a medley of photographs spanning his 25-year career, many never before published. The gorgeous gala is highlighted with Glaviano's recollections.

"I could make a murderer look like an angel," Marco Glaviano writes, "so it's not the inside that interests me.... My aim simply is to preserve beautiful women." These seductive and erotic images celebrate the female form, draped and seminude. Sirens concludes with Glaviano's brief, chattily written account of his repressed Sicilian boyhood, classical art education, and rise to prominence as a fashion photographer for such magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.

Product Details

• Turtleback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books (October 16, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044691245X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446912457
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Glamour, Nude, and Fashion Photography, December 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sirens (Turtleback)

So many examples of excellent glamour, nude, and fashion photos are to be found in this book, which is a must-have for anyone interested in these three related areas of photography. Considering how often we are confronted with cheesy glamour photography in the media, it is especially laudable how artistic Marco Glaviano's glamour images are. His fashion images and nude images are also impressive works of art, but that is less surprising, since many photographers have made artistic images in the areas of fashion and nude photography.

If you appriciate glamour, nudes, and fashion photography, you will most likely love this book.

If you have interest in seeing images of celebrities, you will most likely enjoy this book. In fact, Marco Glaviano's images of celebrities are often much better than those taken by other photographers of the same celebrity.

Although this book has both color and black and white images, if you believe only black and white can be art, you may not be entirely satisfied with this book. There are other photography books that contain only black and white images.

If you are offended by nudes, even artistic ones, you would probably not like this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great summary of great models and a great career, October 26, 1997

By 

Bill T (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sirens (Turtleback)

This is one stunning book of some stunning women. It starts off with Cindy Crawford and Eva Herzagovia (hope I got that right!) and reaches back about 25 years to cover all the majors and a lot of models I never heard of. From magazine shoots for the most part, there are photos rangeing from a few nudes and partial nudes through sportswear, and formals, every one is shot in beautiful style, very expressively, and in some beautiful locations (St. Barth is a favorite of Glaviano's, apparently). Frankly, one of the reasons I bought the book is for pointers on posing and shooting in any situation I could glean from the photos, its that wide ranging.

The photos come in sets and individual shots. Accompanying most of the photo sets include a snippet of words from Glaviano about his reaction to that model or that shoot. It adds a real feel to the situation he as a photographer was living in at the time and sometime the character of the model. The time he broke his leg on a shoot with Cindy Crawford, for example (it all comes out well in the end and Cindy is one of the Good Guys).

The quality of the book and photos is good too, though I could have wished for a somewhat larger size. At about 8 x 8 inches this book is not quite pocket sized and not quite full sized. And the term hardback is loosely defined as well. The covers aren't really stiff, but they aren't floppy paper either.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Photographs and Anecdotes, February 18, 1998

By 

"trp0" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sirens (Turtleback)

Glaviano captures the beauty of each model with amazing composition and attention to detail. His use of light, shadow, textures, etc. is marvelous. Almost every photograph is a gem and demonstrates the astute eye of Glaviano. The accompanying anecdotes are nice as well; giving us a look at the personality of the photographer as well as his personal take on the models he has photographed.