Good Vibrations Magazine

Just when I think I’ve seen the ultimate in erotic imagery, just when I think it can’t get any better, someone comes along and shows me something hotter, something sexier. I’ve often come across a very sexy photograph and thought, “That’s it, that’s the most perfect situation, most arousing person,” only to see another erotic photo a few weeks later that took me aback, again.

Whole books with that kind of impact are rare to come by. Collections that manage to capture the splendid vagaries of arousal in repose are noteworthy, while a body of work by a singular photographer in one arousing volume is something to scream and shout about. Lucky for us, over the past year three incredible collections have been released that make these feelings (among others) brand new all over again.

Richard Kern is a New York photographer who cut a swath through the erotic photography world with his critically acclaimed book New York Girls. In it, he brought us young women in various states of undress and naughty play (with each other as well as various objects, like lollipops) shown simply as themselves — pretty, but not polished, in their own clothes, with their own friends, with all their flaws uncovered. And they palpably reveled in their sexuality. It was a successful recipe.

At the end of 2000, Richard Kern unveiled his latest work, Model Release. When an established photographer releases a new book, you sort of know what to expect — you have a taste of their style, feel, lighting, and you hope that they’ve still “got it.” That’s even more true with erotic photography, where the photographer is more likely to go off on a tangent (as when Eric Kroll emulated Elmer Batters) or consign themselves to dully repeat the same formula (for example, Justice Howard’s obsession with strippers in body paint).

Imagine my surprise when Model Release took an unpredictable route. Kern took his flair for portraying the sexual beauty and rapture in ordinary young women, and developed his compositional and portraiture styles to evolve the erotic nude yet again. Beautifully shot in ordinary settings, these all-natural women are shown as arousing in the everyday — they’re hairy, shaved, thin, curvy, fat, sometimes tattooed, with last night’s makeup, no makeup, in bed during or after sexual friction. They manage to be sexy even when they’re in the kitchen looking like they wish Kern would go away. The images that involve deliberately sexual settings underscore the sexual heat and tension shown throughout the book. There are very few books that are this consistently sexy.

If what you’re looking for is a tasty sampler of the finest erotic photographers, don’t miss Michelle Olley’s Venus: Masterpieces of Erotic Photography. Venus captures the finest camera-jockeys in the biz, who in turn are capturing the tastiest contemporary female morsels in a stunning array of scenes, moods and settings. In a seamless stream of 150 hypnotically arousing nudes, well-known photographers such as Steve Diet Goedde, Nan Goldin, George Platt Lynes, and Tony Ward mingle with ingenious slightly lesser-knowns like Gerard Musy, Jeanloup Sieff and Marco Sanges. Both black-and-white and color shots are so well rendered that they’re timeless, and this oversized book is even tasteful enough to live on your coffee table. It has no explicit scenes of penetration, but plenty of heat. It’s a gorgeous book with a remarkable array of photographic styles, and it’s jam-packed with sexy women.

Roy Stuart has been amassing a body of erotic work that, if we saw it all in one place, at one time, might cover an entire city block. Living in boring old Paris, Stuart has learned to while away the hours taking dirty pictures of beautiful Parisian women. Indoors, outdoors, with spectators or alone, he seems to capture the women at the heights of erotic frenzy, exhibiting it with seemingly little control of their own. And he doesn’t stop there, getting group shots with handsome European men, with other women, in all combinations. They feature exposure, sex, foot worship, shoe fetishes, lots of stockings, incredibly sexy lingerie, and a dash of dominance and submission. With German mega-publisher Taschen, Stuart has produced two hardbound oversized color photo books of these erotic exploits (plus a few postcard books and day planners, far too explicit for most of us to actually use). And now, to the delight of many, we have the new Roy Stuart 3.

Stuart is at a point in his career when he is certainly at his best. His newest collection of giant color and black and white photography also showcases his work at its most explicit. Loosely themed chapters depict a variety of women — mostly young, small-breasted and unshaved, but with some age and body variances — in a myriad of sexualized settings. Overtly sexual scenes range from a two-woman episode in which one of them is instructed in the finer points of body worship (culminating in a simultaneous vibrator scene), to a man and woman who have sex on an intimate stage. Some of the more explicit scenes are noteworthy for unique elements, as when two heterosexual couples have sex in the same room and they have a same-sex partner swap. Less explicit but equally sexual scenes include lots of public flashing and countless peeks up skirts at panties. These are sprinkled throughout the book, and make the cover-to-cover journey exciting. In all, Roy Stuart 3 is a lush look at European sexuality, and is certainly arousing.

The range of erotic photography’s new wave is stunning. These three books showcase the best of the contemporaries — no one looks like anorexic fashion models, people are enjoying their sexuality, and the photographers are gifted and talented at their craft. For those who enjoy tasteful explicit imagery, this is a fine time, indeed.

For further pleasure:
Roy Stuart
Roy Stuart vol. 2