At Ease: Navy Men of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful -- and great timing
Review: An excellent presentation of archived WWII photos. It's obvious that significant research went into identifying these photos among the thousands archived. The book has a nice flow, the groupings and layout are both excellent. Bachner successfully presents the innocence, the erotic, and the light nature of WWII sailors "at ease". A must have!

Rating:
Summary: Coming Together, Navy Men
Review: I absolutely "loved" this book from the first moment I picked it up and opened its first page. The photographs captivate a time when men could show affection without the worry of not being masculine enough. Thank you Evan Bachner for sharing your vision and putting together these marvellous photographs of this celebrated time in History. My dad was in the Navy during World War II and lived on a destroyer, and he has just recently started telling me some of "his" stories of being out at sea, sometimes for months at a time. I came across photographs years ago when I was just a young man of my dad and his ship-mates, and his photographs could easily been a part of this beautiful collection that Evan Bachner has displayed in "At Ease". I look forward to "At Ease,part Two."

Rating:
Summary: Coming Together, Navy Men
Review: I absolutely "loved" this book from the first moment I picked it up and opened its first page. The photographs captivate a time when men could show affection without the worry of not being masculine enough. Thank you Evan Bachner for sharing your vision and putting together these marvellous photographs of this celebrated time in History. My dad was in the Navy during World War II and lived on a destroyer, and he has just recently started telling me some of "his" stories of being out at sea, sometimes for months at a time. I came across photographs years ago when I was just a young man of my dad and his ship-mates, and his photographs could easily been a part of this beautiful collection that Evan Bachner has displayed in "At Ease". I look forward to "At Ease,part Two."

Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Collection, Nostalgia at its Finest
Review: I loved spending time with this book, not just because it was terrific eye candy, but because it unearthed a vision of life during World War II that hasn't really been seen in this kind of photographic detail. Evan Bachner did a terrific job compiling this book and his six years of work on it was well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Sexual identity politics, not WWII history
Review: If you're a naval history reader or someone who enjoys books on the "greatest generation," it's important to point out that this book is fundamentally political in nature, and apparently calculated as a sort of campy joke on the military book-buying public.

The author clearly has a political axe to grind. His biography on the jacket forthrightly states his homosexuality (not that there's anything at all wrong with that). Accordingly, every photo in the book appears to have been selected for its homoerotic suggestiveness: sleek, muscled backs and long strong legs of sailors in unusually close physical proximity, camped out on flight decks, and generally crawling on top of each other. This tacit editorial thrust is fine, except that the publisher and author have cynically packaged the book as WWII history, when in fact it has an altogether different agenda to promote.

For the author and the publisher to present the book as a work of naval history is disingenuous to say the least. This is a work of homosexual soft-pornography, framed with an almost campy Village People "In the Navy" subtext that insults the innocent ingenuousness of the Navy veteran of World War II.

I am no homophobe. In my business, I can't afford to be. I simply feel sorry for the gallant but politically unsophisticated WWII veterans out there who are displaying this book in their collection, unwittingly being used as foils for the author's political message and prurient interest in male beefcake.


Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Photography Books of the Year!
Review: In Evan Bachner's very imformative introduction to this extraordinary book, he tells of how a photograph of a soldier from World War II caught his eye in the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997. The photographer was someone he had never heard of before, Horace Bristol. Mr. Bachner in his dogged research discovered that the great photographer Edward J. Steichen had created the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit and then had assembled professional photographers in addition to Mr. Bristol who had made World War II photographs and ultimately printed over 15,000 images by the end of the war. Now seven years after Mr. Bachner's initial discovery, we have this stunning collection of over 150 beautifully composed, exposed and printed photographs by no less than the publisher of fine art books, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Although there are a few photos of sailors working, for the most part these men are truly "at ease" as they sun themselves, exercise, swim, read, play games, write letters, horse around or just relax. Had Walt Whitman been alive during this era, he would have written paens to these men and their "love of comrades." There is a wonderful innocence about these photographs of men among friends. And we can all be glad that because of the order of President Truman a little later, that no photographer would ever again shoot black sailors in segregated sleeping quarters. (There are a few photographs here of black sailors relaxing together and only one shot of a black sailor and white sailor together.)

Surely this book will be on everyone's short list of best photography books of 2004. It's destined to become a classic.

Rating:
Summary: At Ease is Easy on the eye
Review: It's great to see so many men lying around, playing together, touching each other without guilt, and in general being best friends. The photos are high quality with great composition. I wish there were more opportunities for men to be so At Ease with each other.

Rating:
Summary: At Ease is Easy on the eye
Review: It's great to see so many men lying around, playing together, touching each other without guilt, and in general being best friends. The photos are high quality with great composition. I wish there were more opportunities for men to be so At Ease with each other.

Rating:
Summary: A Moving Tribute to Masculine Beauty
Review: Looking through the photographs in this book was like viewing a beautiful dream. The photography is excellent as it was done by the military's professional staff of photographers. The sailors are fascinating to look at. They are in peak physical condition and their faces are expressive and feeling. A part of history with enormous importance has been catalogued and preserved for the future by this wonderful author. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: The photos in this wonderful book are vastly different from those that we normally see from the WW2 era. But that's exactly what is so compelling about them. All at once they're touching, erotic, and sexy. A must-have book for any photography collector.