orgasm by Tony Ward, Last
Gasp of San Francisco, U.S., $39.95, ISBN 0-86719-501-0, 96 pp,
2000, www.lastgasp.com.
A perfect ass
is thrust up and out to receive the handle of a slim, black whip
the subject's mouth open in deep orgasm. Soft curls of lips swallow
the five toes of a foot ... the sexy swallower's eyes half-closed
in a look of internal concentration. Long legs spread wide apart
to submit a dripping stream of piss which splashes into a black
pot
Erotic photographs
can be very hard to review.
With a film you can quickly say if it's boring, the acting is
atrocious, or the script sucks. With a book you can quickly see
if the plot's lame, the characters are flat, or the writing is
crappy. But photos are absolutely subjective; one man's hot shot
is another fellow's wall-to-wall birdcage carpet.
Let's face it: If you have a thing for, say, heels and hose,
a gorgeous pair of pins in black silk and eight-inch stilettos
will always get your hammer hard, even if they're out of focus,
with clumsy composition and lousy lighting.
Which brings me to Tony Ward's book, orgasm, from Last
Gasp of San Francisco.
I like it.
As I said, reviewing this sort of book is tough. Sex photography
is different because of the many possible motivations for creating
it. Is it meant to be simply erotic? Or is it supposed to be
an elegant mix of haute couture and cool sexuality, like Helmut
Newton? In that line, there are so many types of images by the
great erotic photographers. The dirty, nasty, hard works of the
great Mark Chester. Michael Rosen's wonderful portraits of erotic
personalities. The voyeuristic, engrossing documentaries of Charles
Gatewood. And, of course, Robert Mapplethorpe's brilliant studies
of black and white, skin and cock.
Sometimes you can't tell what a photographer's particular interest
is by seeing a single image. A bare breast is just a tit on film,
but a book of pictures of dozens of breasts indicates a definite
mammary fixation.
Looking at the dozens of black and white images in orgasm, three
things are immediately clear. First, Tony Ward obviously likes
sex; every one of these images projects a thumping libido. Second,
Ward likes very, very pretty women. Almost all the images are
of tall, leggy, perfectly quaffed, immaculately made-up women
with a distant, almost arrogant look in their eyes. Third, these
are mens' pictures. With very few exceptions, the cocks in these
pictures aren't connected to anyone; their owners lurk outside
the frame, donating only their members to the shoot.
The images in this book are also executed perfectly. Composition,
lighting, use of focus, grain, all of it first-rate, extraordinary.
The women are all model-perfect: tall, thin, ideally sculpted,
finely executed. Their legs are ideal forms of calf and thigh.
Their breasts are firm and high, tipped by swollen, firm nipples.
Their cunts are plush, like fat fingers between their legs.
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