Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 778
EAN: 9783822845011
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 3822845019
Label: Taschen
Manufacturer: Taschen
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 280
Publication Date: 2008-08-14
Publisher: Taschen
Studio: Taschen

Beyond voyeurism: exploring the female body, attitudes, instincts, and dreams

In the 20th century, when pornography made its debut in the film world with its aura of improvisation and amateurishness, it had a caustic challenging quality, a freshness and a natural authenticity. By becoming industrialized and codified, it then let itself be confined in the twofold ghetto of distribution and its related rituals, churning out a pantomime of crude, unexciting, formatted images. Eroticism has always had "better press," especially since it has often been "involved" with literature and great authors have laid sacrifices on its altar. However, limited by censorship, above all self-censorship, to a restrictive representation of sex, it sentenced itself to insipidness and self-mutilation, believing it could find a way out in vain, repetitive sophistication, paradoxically proving, much to the satisfaction of moralists, that since monotony is always born out of uniformity, prefabricated pornography and eroticism have become, and remain boring.

This realization inspires an artist like Roy Stuart. Taking advantage of Western society's relative freedom, he has investigated the use that can be made of this dilemma. A photographer and film-maker, switching from printed to moving image, he seeks to liberate the image from its final taboos, to escape the conventional representation of sex. But, more than anything else, he has an artistic project, eroticism and beyond voyeurism, he strives to explore the female body, attitudes, instincts, and dreams.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Is it Art?
Comment: My lady asked whether this was art or pornography. My answer is YES. It is both. Not great porn. but great photography and definitely art.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Sexual Explosion!
Comment: This is Stuart's fifth book from Taschen and the common denominator throughout is Stuart's powerful, unique, erotic style. This collection of stills also includes a DVD that chronicles the action. This is striking because the photographs are not random snapshots but appear to follow the sexual encounters as their play out. And though the live action is spectacular .. the photographs are electrifying. The locations, wardrobe, makeup, and especially the flawless beauty of the models themselves give the work a forbidden quality - like a Vogue photoshoot gone wrong, where the models suddenly gave into their desires and started to grab and claw and ravish each other. Through Stuart's camera we are allowed witness to each chaotic, sexual explosion. It's the ultimate voyeur experience.

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