Customer Reviews

Underworld

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Photographs taken by old masters of photography,new masters,and amatuer photographers make underworld complete. This book is as safe as you can get to another person in their underwear or lack of without the risks we face,today. Very sexy,innocent,and liberating! Bravo,Kelly...

This classy collection of photographs (most of them black-and-white) from the famous, infamous and anonymous covers 100 years of shutterbuggery of the least public aspect of fashion--underwear. She, he, straight, gay, in between--this book will be appreciated by all connoiseurs of photography, fashion, and the art of the book. Underworld is a loving appreciation of the human form with often whimsical arrangements (the Maidenfrom center spread is a masterful touch) featuring the work of Andre Kertez, Steven Meisel, Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, Brassai, Robert Doisneau, Imogen Cunningham, Cindy Sherman, and 70+ other surveyors of the human landscape.

A great gift for newlyweds or that special someone in your life.

It's not what I expected, I was hoping to see more vintage pictures but there are very few of those in the book but it makes a very adult orientated table book.

Calvin's wife Kelly must share his edge for selling underware and hers is magnificent.A collection of old,new,boy,girl,tops only ,bottoms only,jumping through the air two friends seem to glide in a coming of age.Bawdy women and curious men seem like a midsummer's night dream.

Underworld is one of my `special' books. Much of my collection is either focussed on the technical aspects of photography or the product-high quality photography, usually applied to either Glamour or Erotic applications and a smaller collection of the best of Landscape or Sexual photography. Underworld falls into one of the smaller categories again and is one of the collections of classic photography. Underworld touches me at a certain deep level and I only usually realize after I've paused long enough to do my occasional casual flick through it.

Underworld takes my emotions back in time. Underworld obviously so well captures the sense of history that I find myself re-living being a child in the `60s and `70s flicking through the magazines in the newsagent of a small remote town. I don't just remember those moments but for some moments I am there again. I see the images of the lifestyles that seemed so surreal to the bright starry eyes of my innocence in the photographic styles represented, possibly taken by some of the same photographers. It brings back a time and place where it was normal to find people sun-baking or swimming naked but seeing my first published photo (outside National Geographic) which included a nipple, I thought `someone's going to hell for that' because it was obviously in a licentious context. This is a book of classic images that snapshot many points in history well. By the same token, there is very little nudity as such or sexual content, so much of it just having the undertone that was the hallmark of the style then, inferred but never spoken, in your mind rather than in your face.

This is a book I'd be happy to share with my Father, who, because of his and my shared interest in photography subscribed to `Australian Photography' magazine, in part so he could pass them on to me. These magazines came to me but not before any articles about shooting nudes or images containing such things as nipples, pubic hair etc. had been carefully scissored out. What little there may be in Underworld that would challenge my dear Dad's values and view of the world is in context enough and with the subtlety of the time and style, as opposed to the gratuity of our more brash, and superficial styles of more recent times.

I love this book because when I flick through it I don't just remember periods in history, I re-live them. I feel the sand between my toes, feel the emotions I did as a kid finding photos of the rest of the world bewildering and enthralling, I can smell the dry rot in the timber and a million other forgotten moments it triggers in my mind.

Underworld is a very nice book, in which you can see pictures taken by the world's most renowned photographers.