Rating: 
Summary: Impressionist Images
Review: Michael Rosen's "Sexual Magic" is a lyrical, artistic, taboo breaking study of the San Francisco sexual underground and the real people he meets on his journey. These aren't Kodak vacation snapshots. Rosen's impressionist images are grainy, soft and contrasty. They are images filled with movement, as if he took serveral moments in time and combined them all into a single image.These techniques move us past our natural curiousity and obsession with surface reality, fantasy models and exotic gear to capture and reveal the heart and soul of radical sexuality. In picture after picture, Rosen digs beneath the surface and captures faces, relationships and shared moments of fun, outrage, intensity and love. So whips become blurs of energy shooting through the frame. And passionate faces vibrate and shimmer. Rosen breaks ground in other ways. He not only presents real people as sexual icons, he mirrors the real world by including a broad range of sexual orientations and sexual styles in his work. And by combining the photographs with text taken from interviews he did with the photo subjects, Rosen humanizes them while letting them speak for themselves about their lives and their desires. If what you're really looking for is commercial porn, like Greg, pass this book by. But if you're looking to be touched, emotionally and intellectually (to name just two......), if you'd like to learn why Rosen's "S/M photographs" are sexual magic, you'll find this an engaging, challenging and stimulating book.
Rating:
Summary: An Insider's View Of S/M
Review: This book isn't porn, it's almost an ethnographic study of people engaged in radical sexuality. If you are looking for a glossy wet dream of fantasy girls in leather then this isn't the book you want, but if you wish you could be in the middle of a real S/M scene with real players here it is. Rosen's artistry captures the passion and energy of the moment by using a journalistic soft focus and an amazing sense of what is most important to the participants involved. These are not models posing for the camera, they are players who have allowed Mr. Rosen (and by extension us) a privileged glimpse inside their most personal fantasies.
Rating:
Summary: An Insider's View Of S/M
Review: This book isn't porn, it's almost an ethnographic study of people engaged in radical sexuality. If you are looking for a glossy wet dream of fantasy girls in leather then this isn't the book you want, but if you wish you could be in the middle of a real S/M scene with real players here it is. Rosen's artistry captures the passion and energy of the moment by using a journalistic soft focus and an amazing sense of what is most important to the participants involved. These are not models posing for the camera, they are players who have allowed Mr. Rosen (and by extension us) a privileged glimpse inside their most personal fantasies.
| 
