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Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I love Howard Schatz photography. He has created memorable imagry with his "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance" books. "Body Knots" is an evolution of "Pool Light" which was a sequel to "Water Dance". But not all evolution is happy or successful. This book is far too gimmicky for my taste and I think Mr.Schatz is capable of far more creative imagry than this. How many of these images will appear in Madison Ave. advertising over the next year? Or is that the real goal here? One wonders. Perhaps if Mr.Schatz would have remained in California rather than moving to New York his artistic goals would not have been seduced by the scent of advertising contracts. I don't begrudge an artist trying to earn money but Mr.Schatz was a very successful surgeon before taking up lenswork full time--he isn't a starving artist. What strikes me about "Body Knots" is that it is more a graphic arts presentation than it is fine art photography. Mr. Schatz, please go back and look at "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance". You created something wonderful there. Remember your motives?
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I love Howard Schatz photography. He has created memorable imagry with his "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance" books. "Body Knots" is an evolution of "Pool Light" which was a sequel to "Water Dance". But not all evolution is happy or successful. This book is far too gimmicky for my taste and I think Mr.Schatz is capable of far more creative imagry than this. How many of these images will appear in Madison Ave. advertising over the next year? Or is that the real goal here? One wonders. Perhaps if Mr.Schatz would have remained in California rather than moving to New York his artistic goals would not have been seduced by the scent of advertising contracts. I don't begrudge an artist trying to earn money but Mr.Schatz was a very successful surgeon before taking up lenswork full time--he isn't a starving artist. What strikes me about "Body Knots" is that it is more a graphic arts presentation than it is fine art photography. Mr. Schatz, please go back and look at "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance". You created something wonderful there. Remember your motives?
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I love Howard Schatz photography. He has created memorable imagry with his "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance" books. "Body Knots" is an evolution of "Pool Light" which was a sequel to "Water Dance". But not all evolution is happy or successful. This book is far too gimmicky for my taste and I think Mr.Schatz is capable of far more creative imagry than this. How many of these images will appear in Madison Ave. advertising over the next year? Or is that the real goal here? One wonders. Perhaps if Mr.Schatz would have remained in California rather than moving to New York his artistic goals would not have been seduced by the scent of advertising contracts. I don't begrudge an artist trying to earn money but Mr.Schatz was a very successful surgeon before taking up lenswork full time--he isn't a starving artist. What strikes me about "Body Knots" is that it is more a graphic arts presentation than it is fine art photography. Mr. Schatz, please go back and look at "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance". You created something wonderful there. Remember your motives?
Rating: 
Summary: Stunning Visual Images
Review: If you're standing in a bookstore with a copy of Howard Schatz' new Body Knots in your hand, turn to Knot No. 184 near the end of the book. This image, one of my favorites, is a sly, humorous, enchanting image. Now you're hooked, right? But still not sure if you want to purchase the book ? Then turn to Knot 114 near the middle. This glorious, ingenious, repetition of the human form, part microscopic investigation, part seductive image, provides another reason to believe that Schatz is one of the most interesting, original, creative photographers at work today. In a stunning series of books, covering such themes as homelessness and the endlessly seductive charms of the human body, Schatz has opened our eyes to new ways of looking at the possibilities of photography. Body Knots, one of his most creative works, is a book for anyone who wants to be an artist, who wants to understand spatial possibilities, and, especially, wants to laugh over the imaginative limits of form and vision. This is one of those books that will make you look at the world differently.
Rating:
Summary: Body Knots is a must have for photo & art fans
Review: Today I was able to flip through a copy of the new photo book, "Body Knots" by Howard Schatz the photographer whose previous book, "Pool Light" is one of the most daring and beautiful photography books I have ever seen. Most photographers would continue treading down the same artistic path, but not Howard Schatz aparently. Body Knots is a collection of photos of humans entwined to make all sorts of puzzling shapes and images in the most beautiful color schemes and light. There are collages of these strange, ambiguously naked images that create landscapes of the most surreal nature. You don't even realize that you are staring at multicolored nudes entangled. The images seem more like alien shapes. This is a coffee table book that people will flip through repeatedly and enjoy in a unique manner with each viewing. Body Knots is a fun, and beautiful book that celebrates the human body with humor and new perceptions and challenges the viewer to rethink how they see things. I know what I am giving as a gift for the rest of this year.
Rating:
Summary: Body Knots is a must have for photo & art fans
Review: Today I was able to flip through a copy of the new photo book, "Body Knots" by Howard Schatz the photographer whose previous book, "Pool Light" is one of the most daring and beautiful photography books I have ever seen. Most photographers would continue treading down the same artistic path, but not Howard Schatz aparently. Body Knots is a collection of photos of humans entwined to make all sorts of puzzling shapes and images in the most beautiful color schemes and light. There are collages of these strange, ambiguously naked images that create landscapes of the most surreal nature. You don't even realize that you are staring at multicolored nudes entangled. The images seem more like alien shapes. This is a coffee table book that people will flip through repeatedly and enjoy in a unique manner with each viewing. Body Knots is a fun, and beautiful book that celebrates the human body with humor and new perceptions and challenges the viewer to rethink how they see things. I know what I am giving as a gift for the rest of this year.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Budget, Oddly Cold
Review: While technically skillful, the work of Howard Schatz on the whole, and especially in "Body Knots" often seems to betray a somewhat cruel "use-factor" in regards the human beings that are his subjects. Going back as far as his portraits of successful women in the San Francisco Bay area, one portrait symbolically blinded the sitter with reflections on the lenses of her glasses. For follow-up, Mr. Schatz attempted to drown the San Francisco Ballet Company, and now he presents us with human beings decapitated, covered in gimmick-ridden colors or worse, and appearing more like teeth than human. While great art often attacks the human figure to reveal frailty and psychological depth (De Kooning, Bacon...), Mr. Schatz's work, in this reviewer's opinion, while occassionaly producing a graphically stunning image, only touches on the human soul with his photographs of young children, whose unrepressable energy for life perhaps could not be covered over, with technique or artifice.
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