cover image Boudoir Photography

Boudoir Photography

Mario Venticinque. Amphoto Books, $27.5 (131pp) ISBN 978-0-8174-3561-5

The author, a pioneer of boudoir photography, who makes sensual portraits of nonprofessional models for their personal use, addresses this book to colleagues who seek to follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps. The text supplies a businesslike guide to choosing equipment, designing a studio and providing responsive customer service to the female clientele (Venticinque doesn't entertain the notion of male clients). He maintains that his specialty ""fills a void in the services available to women at traditional portrait studios. Today's women want to appear as glamorous and elegantand as sensualas they feel, and . . . they want to be photographed and remembered that way.'' The book is filled with happy endorsements from satisfied customers, but these intimate photographs, like the more conventional studio portraiture, lack spontaneity and animation, and are neither pornographic nor erotic. Photography Book Club main selection. (October)