Customer Reviews

Touch Me

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

 

 

I realize that we are talking about a subjective field (photography), but I found this book didn't warrant the high marks it got from other users. After reading the other reviews, (the first one looks like it was written by an editor), I took a chance and bought it. Wow, what a let down. Some of the shots have real merit and achieve the goals made clear by Murrian in the foreword, but only a few pages in, I got to series with a model playfully looking at the lens through an empty picture frame and it reminded me of every college photography assignment I've ever seen. Not even close to "Smashing The Box" as the title of the foreword implies.

Further in, there was a series of studio portraits where the model had hand prints of paint randomly placed on her torso, and the lighting would have been cutting edge in 1986. Again, I feel like I've seen it too many times before and without some context, it just feels like art school.

To Murrian's credit, the models are not typical or processed looking, but they are all very young, and in a lot of cases, do not produce compelling images. I think a few of the pictures work, but most of the book just feels lost.

It's my fault, but I will never again buy a book based on Amazon reviews.

Murrian's new collection reiterates his passion for young women's beauty - with strong emphasis on the "young" part. These are undoubtedly gorgeous models, though, and presented in an interesting range of settings and poses.

A number appear with some kind of body paint, if only a hand-print - this series didn't do much for me. Natures's own markings, like Michaela's and Tatiana's, enhance the lady's charm far more than splotches of garish color ever could. Other photos bedeck the model with heavy, colorful jewelry. I found this more successful, but an approach that needs work. Matching of jewelry to model and the model's way of wearing it offer endless potential, and I hope Murrian make more of it in the future. Then there's the bondage series. Colorful, soft bindings come from the light and playful side of eroticism, almost more of a giftwrap than a restraint. Still, even when it's so far from the dark side, it's a fetish that doesn't move me.

Really, it's about the models. In some of his previuos work, the models seemed largely to be props in a scene from some fantasy of Murrian's. This time, the woman herself remains the focus, as she should be. This isn't the most demanding or enchanting collection around, but its tasteful sensuality earns it a place in any collection of figure photography.

-- wiredweird

This is a very good larger-format photo collection of sexy, beautiful young models, with edgy themes, interestingly composed and posed.

Most photo collections of nudes cluster at the opposite ends of the spectrum. On one side are tawdry attempts to be openly sexual, little better than hardbound versions of hardcore magazines, which in the internet age has little shock value and plenty of tedium. On the other end are art-school attempts to abstract the body: filled with out-of-focus, barely lit subjects and shots of isolated limbs/features. Those have artistic merit, but do little to capture the inherent warmth and sensuality of the female body, and grow dull rapidly unless you are studying photography.

Murrian's work fills the much-neglected middle of that spectrum. Gorgeously sexy girls, posed provocatively but not luridly, photographed brilliantly, with each series of shots telling a story that seems to fit its subject.

As an amateur photog and a life-long connoisseur of the female form, I especially appreciate the quality of the composition, the lighting, the post-processing that enhances the woman's beauty, rather than masking it as is too often the case. I'd go as far as to say this collection represents the best such work I've seen in the genre.

Indeed, Murrian seems the unusual photographer gifted in both the art and the technical side of photography, while also somehow selecting phenomenally attractive young women as his models, and conveying their raw sensuality. Props and sets are unobtrusive, rather than the focus, and he uses modern techniques like small amounts of bodypaint (handprints!), makeup, and so forth selectively and to good effect.

This volume is physically of a size and print quality (heavy, glossy stock) to do justice to the work; I liked his previous book, Babydoll, just as much (that one is a single subject study of his lovely muse-turned-wife), but I felt it was too small a format to fully show off this caliber of photography. And if you can't get enough, several of the models appear further on Murrian's website. (yes, I went looking)

Highly recommended.

Mr. Murrian has, in my opinion, only one valuable achievement in this book. He has been able to show certain light trends of fetishistic bondage (and other common fetishes) without presenting them as dark, morbid or sinister. On the contrary, he presents it in a way that suggest a more delightful eroticism, funnier, more playful than how these practices are generally presented on erotic photography. This is the plus side.

The average side: Lighting and technique could have been more cutting edge a few decades ago, but in general I would consider them average. I will not deny he has the skills to set professionally the lighting for his shots, but that is, in my book, not particularly mesmerizing.

The minus side: I am not particularly pleased with his choice of models. I don't find particularly erotic pubescent girls. I am not saying that the six or so models in this book are underage, but it is my impression they were purposely chosen to look like if they were (with maybe the Michaella, the model of the first set, being the only exception). They really look like junior high students.