"(...)The book's production mimics the contrast between old and new that runs throughout my work. Old format, modern images. A universal ancient subject yet seen through my, I hope, unusual personal prism."
(Alvin Booth in an interview with sarah Baxter,
EYEMAZING, 04-2008)
Peepholes
"(...) The concise and intimate nature of the Peepholes was intended to invite the viewer to step into an erotic tableau and become a voyeur, and to feel what it is like to be a naughty observer squinting through the keyhole at the bedroom door. (...)
The Exhibitionist
"(...) The male member seems to have been alienated from the body and the person to whom it belongs, and transformed into an engine of sexual performance, a symbol of rampant masculinity, a device tuned and enlarged at will. The Exhibitionist series is an attempt to reclaim the depiction of the penis for art. It shows this organ in all its states - from briefly and bulgingly erect to flaggingly flaccid. These pictures offer an antipornography that could adorn the gallery walls. The photographs deploy both wit and eroticism to show a man and woman at play.(...)"
"(...) In the art world, when you see a male nude, he is almost always flaccid. If the nude has an erection, especially in photography, it is usually in a homosexual context. If you see a male nude with an erection in a heterosexual context, it's almost always pornography. I wanted to bring the erect heterosexual male nude out of pornography, and onto the gallery wall. So it's a man, with an erection, with a woman. I wanted to make the penis non-threatening as well as humorous. The penis is not always about penetration, about a thrusting, throbbing organ. It's a funny piece of tumescent flesh.(...)"
Unnatural Selection
"(...) I like to see the skin stretched and pulled, because it's a very elastic organ, isn't it? The Unnatural Selection book contains images that I've taken over the past 15 years where I think I've gone a little too far. During the session, you tie a little bit more here, stretch a little bit more there, and paint a little more latex on the top... Then, at the end of it, when I develop the film, I think it's too much. But after 10 or 15 years living with these prints, when you put them all together, they make sense.(...)
(Alvin Booth in an interview with Sarah Baxter,
EYEMAZING, 04-2008)
Alvin Booth
was born in Hull, an industrial city in the Northeast of England. He left school at the age of seventeen and trained to become a hairdresser. After working in Hull he later moved to Oxford where his interest in photography grew. In 1989 he gave up hairdressing and moved to New York City.
His work is highly valued on the international photography market, and has been exhibited in international museums and is represented by some of the most prestigious galleries in major cities in the United States and Europe. He divides his time between New York and the southwest of France.
Alvin Booths first book of nudes, CORPUS (forward by Charlotte Cotton of the Victoria and Albert Museum) was awarded the Kodak Photo Book press award for 2002.
