by Tom Bianchi
Somewhere, on a high hill in San Francisco, lives a couch whose cushions have cradled some of the most beautiful men in the world. Lucky couch - and lucky us, because the couch belongs to photographer Tom Bianchi's life partner, BJ.
In this gorgeous collection, published in a handsome volume from Bruno Gmünder, the couch plays backdrop for all of the photographs, and somehow, the conceit never becomes repetitive. In fact, upon gazing at some of the beauties who give their all for Bianchi's lens, some may well ask the question "What couch?"

Though some of the models are shown wearing clothes, all of them sooner or later get fully (sometimes startlingly) naked. The result is a collection of bare, uninhibited, raw images of masculine power and eroticism. No intimate bit of the models' bodies is left undiscovered by Bianchi's lens. Though it may sound as if these are pornographic photos, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they possess a sweetly erotic quality that would have been impossible in the hands (and eyes) of a less sensitive artist. Bianchi's vision is such that he makes his work sing with a paean to male sexual energy and to the natural beauty of masculine sensuality in all its forms.

The text accompanying the photos gives some wonderful insight into how the shoots came to be, and into each model's background, which is a wonderful departure from the usual silence that accompanies photo essays. One quibble is that it sometimes does venture into stating the obvious - as when Bianchi says of one model "I was sufficiently flattered to nearly get into deep trouble with him."

This is a sumptuous, well-produced book that lovers of Bianchi's work, and lovers of sensual male photography in general, will want to own.

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