Man

Steven Klein's darkly sexual and surreal portraits of the likes of Madonna, Lady Gaga and Brad Pitt have defined a new idiom in fashion and celebrity photography. This luxurious production features his vision of the male nude in previously unpublished photographs and drawings. With its bold declarations of sexuality and an irreverent stance on celebrity, the fashion photography and celebrity portraiture of Steven Klein has set a defining look for our times. Klein is a very different breed of photographer to his colleagues in the field, as any one of his images conveys: the primarily cinematic character of his work lends it a rare scale of drama ('he thinks about the entirety of the set,' says his W magazine collaborator Dennis Freedman). More notoriously, Klein laces his staged scenarios with powerful doses of sadomasochism and surrealism, as his famous portraits of Brad Pitt and Madonna and his controversial video for Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" make plain. Today, as New York magazine recently raved, 'Klein is, arguably, the most influential (and busy) fashion photographer in the world...even while his career seems to be all about flouting the rules of fashion photography.'
This extraordinary volume concentrates Klein's vision of the male nude and male sexuality in a series of previously unseen photographs and drawings addressing themes of death, desire, violence and transformation. Bound in leather by Italian craftsmen, and limited to an edition of 750 copies, it is the most concise and extravagant statement of the Klein aesthetic yet published.