by Reed Massengill
Universe Publishing, 2005
Available on amazon.com
What a wonderful concept. A collection of male nudes taken by the subjects themselves. What could be more erotic, and exciting?
I eagerly awaited my copy with baited breath.
Then it arrived. Mental caveat to self: make sure it's nude self-portraits of men that I want to see naked in the first place!
None of these guys is famous, but imagine an elderly Jacques Cousteau treating our lucky eyes to a picture of his worn out body and you have an idea of what some of the contents of Self Exposure are like: fat, pot-bellied, wrinkled, sagging, aged and otherwise unappealing bodies.
As well, it contains too many pictures that are more performance art in the style of Yoko Ono than self-exposure in the context of male nudity. I can’t deny that many of the performance art pieces are imaginative, but to what end? Provocative, perhaps. But hardly sexy. Some are just plain gross -- nothing I would want to lay down good old American greenbacks for.
All in all, Self Exposure first struck me as a fantastic let-down. But with a slightly more open approach, I learned that the book is not a complete waste. There are a few itsy bitsy diamonds if you persevere and dig through the tons of coal.
Plate 2, exotically entitled Phuket Night by photographer/model Yann Amstutz hardly conjures an image of Thailand to mind. You see the subject reflected in the window of his high-rise apartment, or hotel room between parted drapes, the city lights in the distance. His image seems to float over the city, fading in and out of visibility as if drifting between this world and the next. It is a wonderful composition, but one that could have been photographed in any metropolis. There are no identifying landmarks to place it in South-East Asia. At first glance I thought it was Los Angeles. But regardless of the actual city, the picture is well worth a thousand looks.
My favorite picture in Self Exposure is Plate 112, taken in 1993, of and by Brian To. From his surname he is presumably Asian, and the setting seems tropical enough. We see highly flexible Brian in the nude. His legs and arms wrapped around a cocoanut palm tree! It is of course, a highly unusual and erotic sight, and could well be taken in Phuket, but was in fact photographed in Miami, Florida.
You could make all kinds of psychobabble phallic comments. Brian does appear to be riding a giant phallus! And the hairy dangling cocoanuts on the two other trees in the picture do resemble huge testicles. But the picture itself is glorious enough for what it is, a beautiful man literally embracing nature. I would love to wake up to this picture as a giant poster in my bedroom. Absolutely magnificent!
The next plate, 113 by and of the same Mr. To, but this time taken four years later in 1997 in Milan, Italy, is my second favorite. This time we see him in silhouette in a much more mundane situation, standing in his shower stall, a window behind him letting in brilliant sunshine. It’s a small, cramped tiled bathroom, with a commode and a bidet in the foreground, but it is Brian’s buff body that locks the eye.
Of course, it is his gorgeous body that catches my attention, but Brian definitely has a great sense of artistry, and a talent to find just the right circumstances to showcase his best attributes.
Plate 132 titled Harmony, featuring Drew Wojcik, is another man-and-nature composition. You can’t help but admire his solid buns and his entire musculature, including the deep crevasse running up his spine. Balanced atop a boulder with his arms outstretched, he's almost the very definition of light-heartedness and whimsy, an Icarus about to take flight.Plate 50 is also of a dick that's throbbing sexual interest. I like the model and the way he is seated, looking completely to one side, displaying his powerful profile to best effect, his arched feet, his crossed arms, all come together to create a perfect physical synergy. Almost symbolizing an endless loop of human energy. The framed picture behind him, with the off-centered face, almost gives the impression of a peeping tom peering into his life. It is a surreal vision reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock (in Vertigo and Spell Bound in particular) at his metaphoric finest.
Plate 23 is a simple nude man posed against a sheet, or comforter strung from a nondescript wall. Basic yet graceful, pensive and somehow artistic, and even better, it works!
The picture was taken way back in 1981, so who knows how he looks now. But I am grateful that we have this picture he snapped of himself at his prime to admire and enjoy today, and forever.
Please take a look at Self Exposure for yourself. You might well come to completely different conclusions than mine. That is the beauty of our free society. Everyone is free to see things as they please.
Your comments are always welcome: Ernie Alderete@Charter.net