Jerry
Flack has won an audience, based on the hits IGW has seen of his last
few "coffee table" male nude book reviews. And so IGW is proud to
present his latest review in the "genre."Be sure to let Jerry know how much it's costing you to keep up with all these coffee table books, here.
Locker Room Nudes: Dieux du Stade The
French National Rugby Teamby Francois Rousseau
Hardcover: 152 pages, $50.00
Publisher: Universe (August 23, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0789313073
When is a calendar not a book? When it displays France’s finest and most handsome Rugby players, reveals the photographic artistry of Francois Rousseau, and is just so damn hot that it will burn a space on the desk wall. Hell, it is so sizzling it may even ignite and fry one’s computer hard drive! Conversely, a book is not a calendar when the only safe place for it is on a coffee table made of steel, chrome, titanium, or marble. The subjects of Locker Room Nudes are REAL men. All are professional athletes. None are “prettified” actors or models. They are not afraid to get dirty and they are definitely not ashamed to display their brawny, rock-hard athletic bodies. Indeed, a few of the most erotic photographs portray mud-covered athletes playfully wrestling in the showers. Locker Room Nudes personifies “joy de vivre!” The astonishing joy and lack of self-consciousness of the athletes makes the viewing all the more fun and enjoyable. Here is a magnificent and erotically-charged book of photography that is simply not to be missed.
Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art by Jonathan Weinberg (Harry N. Abrams, 2005) is the most gorgeous art book of masculine beauty this year, and Peter Kuhnst’s Physique (Thames & Hudson, 2005) [See both reviewed in the July issue of The Independent Gay Writer.] is the most breath-taking book of both male and female athletes at the height of their physical glory, but Locker Room Nudes is the top-of-the-line, blue ribbon, gold-medal book of male nudes and semi-nudes yet to be published this year.
Locker Room Nudes has a fascinating history. Since 1999, the national French Rugby team has posed nude and semi-nude, alone and with teammates, for world-class photographers to create an annual calendar to stimulate greater interest in the sport of Rugby in France. In 2004, Francois Rousseau was the chosen photographer and his black-and-white images created such a sensation in France that they were placed together as a book for people all over the globe to enjoy. What began as a sexy novelty calendar to promote French Rugby rapidly moved on to become a craze, and finally with Rousseau’s 2004 photography, it has been elevated to the level of figural studies in a fine art photography volume.
Rousseau, originally a painter, has used his artist’s eye to capture on film ruggedly handsome, ravishing and mostly unshaven men, primarily in their locker room, but occasionally on the playing field. The men are portrayed as classical Greek Olympians, Roman Gladiators, or in the Renaissance manner of Michelangelo’s heroic nude sculpture of “David” (1501-1504) as they engage in both individual activities and team bonding throughout Rousseau’s study. Men engage in stretching exercises, taping their wrists, playfully running nude with the team ball or using their hands to coyly mask their complete nudity (as on the classic cover pose), lifting weights, performing calisthenics, dressing, showering, removing sweaty uniforms, and playfully rough-housing following a victory.
Rousseau features several photographic essays within the whole of the book, itself a photographic monograph. One of the best is a series of intense close-ups of the athletes’ faces where their gladiator-like countenances stare at the viewer in an arousing yet almost menacing manner. These images are so intense and “in your face” that not even the entire face or head is captured in some of the over-sized pages. Whether from the sweat of a match or the cleansing relief of a victory shower, these jock images invariably reveal their subjects with dripping wet, curling hair.
Even in his book of masculine joy, there is a photographic essay focused upon views of cheerless, empty locker rooms and gloomy stadium halls as well as occasional athletes who clearly express dejection for what is presumably a team defeat or a sub-par personal performance.
Rousseau’s camera never appears invasive, and one of the striking features of his photographs is how natural and comfortable with the camera his brash and muscular athletes appear to be; Rousseau’s Rugby subjects are anything but camera shy. These men are intensely real, ruggedly handsome and never afraid to roll around in the dirt, take playful showers together, or even stand at the urinal in the locker room and be photographed from behind. They always appear remarkably natural whether nude or draped with a bath towel, a sweaty uniform, or similarly sexy underclothing.
The nude and semi-nude athletes are captured in athletic positions. In virtually all cases, Rousseau allows the men to choose their own poses to best reveal their manhood, always allowing the handsome male athletes to be seen in their full glory. But, then he craftily refocuses and shifts his point-of-view to the faces of the subjects that invariably seem mysterious and steeped in inscrutability.
These great French Rugby players are erotic, arousing, and not afraid to be seen in their raw sexuality. Prefer men who are tall, blond, and arousing? They are featured in abundance in Locker Room. Have a preference for hairy guys wrestling or simply posed in the locker room showers? Again, they may be found frequently in Rousseau’s 150+ radiant black-and-white photographs in this large-format book featuring the raw sexuality of some of the most athletic men in the world. His subjects range from blond Nordic gods to dark and hairy Mediterranean origins to ravishing Black men.
Words simply fail to describe the magic sexuality of this book that is anything but pornography. Think of the most handsome male nude and semi-nude art images in the world such as Donatello’s “David” (1428), Jared French’s “The Farm” (1938) and Harold Stevenson’s “The New Adam” (1962), and then convert those images to male athletes and the reader will begin to comprehend just how magnificently sexy and erotic Francois Rousseau’s Locker Room Nudes is.
Try another approach. Imagine the most handsome male professional sports team’s in the USA or Canada. Now, send a world-class photographer into the locker room before and after the team’s games and allow the artist full freedom to shoot any image he or she finds electrically charged. Again, the reader will gain some feeling for the sheer excitement of this book. These French Rugby guys are something to see! There is not a “poor” picture in Locker Room Nudes. Every male image is sexy, handsome, and erotic. There is also a particular pleasure in this book. The joy de vivre of these models is clearly not faked. These men are truly having a wonderful time.
Best of all, Locker Room Nudes is superb photography, not pornography. Actually, there is very little full-frontal nudity. Without ever being coy, Rousseau’s athletes either pose (recall the shoot originally was for a calendar) or are captured on film unknowingly and naturally. There are a few full-frontal views, but they mostly are included to tease the reader and allow the image lover a bit more of this sublime visual feast. Face it, even well-produced pornography becomes boring after the senses have been bombarded for a time. Such is never the case with Rousseau’s photography. His models are actually MORE sexy for not having revealed everything. There is more of an aura of mystery that is stimulating and exciting here. The allure of masculinity is never uninteresting. The most erotically charged photograph in the entire book portrays a close-up view of two nude athletes in the shower. The taller of the two men has his arms wrapped around a hairy-chested comrade whose own body hides the genitals of his “captor” while soap suds mask his own frontal nudity.
In this respect, Rousseau photographs are somewhat in the fashion of the classic Cary Grant films of the past. Grant, probably the sexiest male movie star of all time, never actually had to be seen engaged in full-body contact sex in “R”- and “X”-rated films to be extraordinarily sexy and alluring. French photographer Rousseau may never have seen a Hitchcock movie, let alone the French Riviera-oriented Grant and Grace Kelly flick “To Catch a Thief” (Paramount, 1955), but his camera stills are parallel. One does not have to actually watch a blatantly staged sex scene on the screen to know exactly what is forthcoming between the two lovers. Similarly, one does not have to view male genitalia that lies behind a Rugby ball or a handful of soap suds in the locker room shower to appreciate just how sexy France’s national Rugby players are. They are HOT! HOT! HOT!
Mae West said it best. “A hard man is good to find.” Rousseau not only found hard men, he photographed them for everyone to enjoy. Readers who prefer real men (as obviously French women and gay and bisexual men do), will find Locker Room Nudes to be the sexiest art photography book of the year.
Warning!! Readers who purchase Locker Room Nudes for a birthday or seasonal holiday gift need to be sure it is the last present their lovers receive. Reason? Once that special guy opens his copy of Locker Room Nudes, his attention will be lost as he will be pleasantly occupied for the next several hours viewing and savoring every single one of Rousseau’s 150+ full-page images.
WOW! 'Vive la France! Vive la French National Rugby Team! Vive la photographer Francois Rousseau! Most of all, Vive la Locker Room Nudes: Dieux du Stade The French National Rugby Team!
Jerry Flack
Denver, Colorado