A fascinating photo book by NATACHA MERRITT is out May 2012, called SEXUAL SELECTION.
“Her
eerily intimate depictions of fucking and sucking transcend smut. Even literate smut.” Rolling
Stone (about Digital-Diaries,
2000)
“The juxtapositions are exceptional… Of course I like the real people having sex, and to put them next to these other biological forms is really original and leads one's imagination to places it hasn't been…” Richard Prince (about Sexual Selection, 12/2011)
“The juxtapositions are exceptional… Of course I like the real people having sex, and to put them next to these other biological forms is really original and leads one's imagination to places it hasn't been…” Richard Prince (about Sexual Selection, 12/2011)
Sex. Art. Insects?
In
2000, Natacha Merritt released Digital-Diaries (Taschen), the first ever book to feature exclusively digital photography.
What was the 21 year old San Francisco native photographing? Her sex life with her friends, masturbating with and
without accessories, in bed, in the shower, in hotel rooms, from every imaginable angle and with the camera
usually at arm’s length. Digital-Diaries allowed the reader a no-holds-barred
insight into Merritt’s fantasies, desires, exploits and realities. Her controversial work was soon featured in
diverse publications across the world from Rolling Stone to The Observer, from
Playboy and Der Spiegel to Dazed and Confused. The book went on to become an L. A. Times and Amazon bestseller, moving over 300,000 copies.
Merritt’s new book Sexual Selection is in many ways
even more captivating. She applied her distinctive
vision to a subtle and complex art, creating astonishing and surprisingly
lyrical images as she compares and
contrasts the sexual intricacies of plants and
insects with her own elaborate sexuality. She returned to higher education to
study evolutionary biology, noting “The leap makes sense when you are
passionate about sex. All roads lead to evolutionary biology, speciation and
genetics.” It wasn’t long before she became transfixed with arachnid genitalia,
peering down a microscope for hours on end in order to capture the perfect
images of a spider’s erect penis, one of the photos featured in her new book Sexual
Selection, published in May 2012 by cult
Berlin arthouse Bongoût.
Each image is unmistakably a work of
art that transcends easy categorisation. Lush
and eerily intimate photographs capture the fleeting moments of arousal and
grant us a rare insight into our universal sexuality. With the questions she
asks as a scientist, she answers as an artist with photography and writing; why
are some sexual practices and organs so detailed, complex and downright bizarre
when this gets in the way of basic survival? As Natacha explains, “Sexual selection
is the sensual side of evolution. It explains the ornate, the creative and the
beautiful, it can explain arousal. It’s what gets us laid.”
By
exposing the often over-looked sensual and sexual behaviour of other species as
well as our own, Sexual Selection is
guaranteed to broaden the readers’ sense of beauty and arousal regardless of
their vantage point.
Pre-order
your copy here: http://shop.bongout.org/p-1450-pre-order-sexual-selection-natacha-merritt.aspx
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