Saudek

The Czech Republic has long been a land of mystery and magic, home to alchemists, artists, and the original bohemians, all of them weavers of spells, creators of fantastic worlds of the imagination. Internationally famous Czech photographer Jan Saudek is no exception, and equally as uncompromising in pursuit of his own unique vision. For over four decades Saudek has created a parallel photographic universe, a two-dimensional home full of longing, peopled with the most extraordinary characters and colored by desire. The timeless strength of his hand-tinted photographs lies in their poetic compositions and their forceful--at times ribald--pictorial language, with its overtones of medieval genre pictures and Baroque mythology. Rejecting the traditional beauty in his famous nude photographs, Saudek shows the distinctively different: old women, fat women, children; real people in tableaux vivants that remind us of everything from surreal early movies to fin-de-siecle carnival nights. They exist outside time, a uniquely colored and almost mythical theater of dreams. (more...)

The Big Penis Book

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Death of a Transvestite

Hero/heroine Glen Marker sits on Death Row and offers to tell his life story in all its sordid detail in exchange for his last wish: to die in drag! In vivid pulp style, the author paints a portrait of the luscious Glenda on a one-way trip to the Big House.

Killer In Drag

Meet Ed Wood's alter ego Glen/Glenda, whose ravishing beauty and musical voice bewitch every male in sight. Impeccably attired in either gender, hired assassin Glen becomes Glenda when it's time to work. But big trouble starts when Glenda decides to give up the murder racket, take up with a sugar daddy, and finance a sex change operation.

Atlas of Creation

The Atlas of Creation uses 759 heavy, glossy pages to illustrate its author's view that the scientific theory of evolution is just plain wrong. The thick, 11-by-15-inch tome, with hologram-like images on its cover, was written by a mysterious Turkish man, Harun Yahya (whose real name is Adnan Oktar). Nearly every page features brilliant color photos of fossils and animals, all which supposedly prove that creationism is correct, and evolution is balderdash.

On page after page, the same formulaic argument appears, which is typified by this quote from a page with a photo of a 150-million-year-old shrimp fossil:

"Since shrimp first came into existence, they have always displayed all the same organs and characteristics as they have today and have undergone no changes in all that time. This shrimp fossil shows plainly that evolution is an imaginary scenario" (p. 110).

The book has been mailed unsolicited—at undoubtedly ludicrously high postage costs-—to scientists, academics, members of Congress, museums, and now apparently think tanks across the United States. Copies have also turned up in France.


Excerpt:

"All the living creatures in the fossil record appear intact and in their perfect forms. For instance, before crocodiles and squirrels, there exist no fossils belonging to any strange creature partly resembling a crocodile, and in other parts to a squirrel or other living creatures. Squirrels have always remained squirrels, and crocodiles have always remained crocodiles. All these facts reveal that the claim of the theory of evolution, that 'Living beings have gradually evolved over millions of years of time' is simply a product of imagination."

Bathroom Graffiti

Ferem has spent the past several years collecting and compiling photographs of exceptional bathroom graffiti, making for the perfect bathroom book. Divided up into thematic sections like "Men’s Rooms," "Women’s Rooms," "Art" and "Politics," unlike other graffiti books, the examples in Bathroom Graffiti are not so much about graffiti as an art form as much as they are about graffiti as the result of personal expression, which will never find its way into galleries or ad campaigns. (more...)

Dr.Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson presents "letters" from sexually frustrated animals, birds, and insects who ask "Dr. Tatiana" to explain some sexual oddity. You'll learn why one stick-insect copulation lasts for 10 weeks (to prevent other males from gaining access to the fertile female) and why the black-winged damselfly's penis has bristles (to scrape out his rival's sperm). You'll learn that male and female orangutans masturbate with sex toys fashioned from leaves and twigs, that slugs are hermaphrodites with penises on their heads, and that females in more than 80 species eat their lovers before, during, or after sex. You'll also ponder human sexuality when you learn that "monogamy is one of the most deviant behaviors in biology" and "natural selection, it seems, often smiles on strumpets."

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer

The life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s are the subject of Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book. Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls--with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poses--were just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text.
Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise, Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque--often sexual--positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence. (more...)

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman created her first photograph at thirteen and took her ownlife at age 22. She left behind a hauntingly beautiful legacy. Flailing, groveling, jumping, and hiding--often dissolving into a blur before the camera--she used her body as an actor in a mysterious drama. In less than a decade Woodman created a body of work that has secured her position as one of the most original American artists of the 1970s, and the first-ever child prodigy of photography. (more...)


Samples:

Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon documents spaces that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity. (more...)

The Ticking

The story of Edison Steelhead, a boy who at birth takes his mother's life and his father's deformed face. Secreted away by his father to be raised in a remote island lighthouse, Edison relates to his surroundings in the only way he knows how -- by capturing them in his sketchbook. Able to find beauty in even the most grotesque of things, Edison embraces his own unsettling appearance and sets out to confront the rest of the world. Waiting for him on its alien shores are the sights and experiences that will give shape to both his future and his past. A gorgeous, compelling hardcover graphic novel by Renee French and designed by Jordan Crane. "Finds its way into the most guarded corners of our psyches and allows us to revel in all that is awkward, embarrassing, or sticky about being alive." -Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season. (more...)

The Ethical Slut

Beyond the often unrealistic ideal of lifetime monogamy lies an uncharted jungle of delightful options -- everything from committed multi-partner relationships to friendly sex, casual sex, group sex and more. This book provides a road map for exploring this sometimes difficult, often rewarding territory. Warm, informative details about how to get your needs met, manage your jealousy, make agreements that work for all concerned, talk to your friends and relatives, and build a life full of all the sex and love you want.


Get you some.

Dream: The Dark Erotic Visions of John Santerineross

John Santerineross proves his genius of dark erotic art with this book of disturbing yet titillating images, an exploration of John's dream imagery and iconography through the use of photographic medium. Reminiscent of Gilles Berquet (but somewhat Gothier), John demonstrates his intelligence and talent in producing work that is provocative, chilling and erotic. The eerie, sensual, often kinky images are accompanied by an introduction from underground erotic writer Nina Hugo, and a short story by artist and writer Bajema.



Get this book before it goes out of print.

The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

"I am sitting on the threshold. Perhaps this is the final paradox of God's paradoxical machinations: my ass is my very own back door to heaven. The Pearly Gates are closer than you think." Bentley is writing of her rhapsodic experience with sodomy. So some will call this memoir blasphemous, others spiritual; some pornographic, others erotic. What it is, is wonderfully smart and sexy and witty and moving, a tale of unbounded passion that leads to transcendence. The tale is paradoxical in more ways than one: aside from Bentley's ass leading to heaven, she finds that submission leads to freedom—-a freedom she had never known as a dancer with the New York City Ballet (about which she wrote her first book, Winter Season), nor in her failed marriage, nor in any of her other polymorphously perverse sexual experiences" (Publishers Weekly). (more...)

Elmer Batters: Legs That Dance to Elmer's Tune

This large book is loaded with full-color and black-and-white images of the work of Elmer Batters, and came from the publisher wrapped in a genuine nylon stocking. Batters passed away in 1997, and this is a great tribute to his work. For collectors of foot and leg fetish art, this is the book for you. There are some graphic images, which some may find as explicit matetial. (out of print)

Exquisite Mayhem

In the early Seventies, Ehret began to stage and photograph female wrestling scenarios in his studio. This erotic photographic genre has come to be known as 'apartment wrestling'. Shot on sets with controlled lighting, his photographs have a sense of uncanny drama absent from previous examples of the "cat fighting" fetish style. This book is the first to present, to a mass audience, the golden age of pro wrestling and its illegitimate sibling: apartment wrestling. By bringing together, for the first time, these two separate bodies of Theo Ehret's work, Exquisite Mayhem presents the roots of today's overtly eroticized theatrical world of pro wrestling. (out of print)

The Atrocity Exhibition

"The first U.S. edition was to have been by Doubleday, also in 1970, but the entire edition was destroyed just prior to publication, with the exception of a few advance review copies and file copies. Senior management at Doubleday had taken exception to the contents, which included Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy. It isn't clear exactly how many copies still survive (perhaps around a dozen), but this is certainly the rarest of Ballard's books; there was a copy for sale in 2006 by bookseller Lloyd Currey for $7,500.

"Following the pulping of the Doubleday edition, E. P. Dutton took the book up, but eventually decided against publication after advice from their lawyers. The first U.S. publication was therefore not until 1972 when Grove Press published the book under the revised title Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A., with a preface by William Burroughs. This edition went out of print fairly quickly, and the book did not reappear in the U.S. until 1990 when Re/Search brought out a large format, extensively illustrated, paperback edition. This reverted to the original title and retained the Burroughs introduction; it also added sidebar annotations by Ballard, as well as four additional pieces - three of Ballard's 'surgical fictions' from the 1970s, Princess Margaret's Facelift, Mae West's Reduction Mamoplasty, and Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty, and (rather incongruously) a story from the late-1980s, The Secret History of World War 3." (http://www.holli.co.uk/JGB/ballard.htm)

Arnold Odermatt: Karambolage

With thoroughness and a meticulous attention to detail, Arnold Odermatt photographed automobile accidents on the streets of the Swiss canton of Nidwalden between 1939 and 1993. For 40 years, the Swiss police office recorded the wrecked cars left in the wake of excessive speed, drunk driving, right-of-way errors, and plain foolishness, in poignant, sometimes funny, and always strange atmospheric photographs.
(out of print)

Pierre Molinier

Pierre Molinier began his career by painting landscapes, but his work turned towards a fetishistic eroticism early on.

Molinier began to take photographs at the age of 18. When Molinier's sister died in 1918, he had sex with her corpse when he was left alone to photograph it. "Even dead," he said, "she was beautiful. I shot sperm on her stomach and legs, and onto the First Communion dress she was wearing. She took with her into death the best of me."

Molinier started his erotic production around 1950. With the aid of a wide range of specially made "props" – dolls, various prosthetic limbs, stiletto heels, dildos and an occasional confidante – Molinier focused upon his own body as the armature for a constructive form that ultimately produced a large body of photographic work. Most of his photographs, photomontages, are self-portraits of himself as a woman.

He began a correspondence with André Breton and sent him photographs of his paintings. Later Breton integrated him into the Surrealist group.

In the 1970's, Molinier's health began to decline. He lost the will to live after he was no longer able to maintain an erection. Like his father before him, Pierre Molinier committed suicide at 76 years of age by self-inflicted gunshot wound while masturbating.


Samples:

Evidence

In 1977 photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel sifted through thousands of photographs in the files of the Bechtel Corporation, the Beverly Hills Police Department, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Stanford Research Institute and a hundred other corporations, American government agencies, and educational, medical and technical institutions. They were looking for photographs that were made and used as transparent documents and purely objective instruments--as evidence, in short. Selecting 50 of the best, they printed these images with the care you would expect to find in a high-quality art photography book, publishing them in a simple, limited-edition volume titled Evidence.


Some samples:




New edition available at Amazon.com

Miroslav Tichy

Miroslav Tich was born in 1926 in what is now the Czech Republic, and studied at the Academy of Art in Prague. After the communist takeover, he is widely reported to have spent as many as eight years in detention camps and mental hospitals. In the late 1950s, he began to make photographs with cameras he designed himself, salvaging their lenses from eyeglasses and making their bodies from tin cans, toilet-paper rolls and cigarette boxes. He chose his subjects from the streets and from public and private spaces of his small town, where he is not a favorite with the ladies--some have reported his peeping-tom-like activity to the police. The resulting images, grainy and often overexposed, cropped and developed at home, framed on card stock, decorated in pencil, and then left to deteriorate around Tich 's house, are haunting.



Tichy's homemade camera:



Some samples:





(via Amazon)