1 comments about Stepping Out: Three Centuries of Shoes (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music).

1. This is a slim but beautiful catalog of part of the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Australia. The shoes themselves are all in color and clearly photographed, the pictures ranging from a couple of inches to an entire page. A few of the smaller ones were a trifle hard to see and would have benefited from being enlarged.
   
   There are also a number of historic photographs, mostly black and white, as well as color reproductions of paintings and advertisements to add historical context.
   
   The introductory matter explains the history of the collection and gives an explanation of shoe-making. The shoes are mainly arranged chronologically with a few introductory paragraphs relative to the period. All the shoes are labelled, but details are give in a Shoe-List section in the back. Of particular interest is the section on Australian shoes which is a valuable supplement to more general histories of shoes. There is also a list of further reading.

2 comments about Hanky Panky: An Intimate History of the Handkerchief.

1. The only book about handkerchiefs I could find, and it has no information about how to care for them. Mostly anecdotes about the author's personal antique hanky collection, with full-page photographs of the more significant hankies.
   
   I wasn't interested in your antique hankies; the topic does not entertain me.
   
   I wanted to learn about the cultural role served by hankies, their social symbolism, why you're supposed to have one folded up in your tuxedo pocket, how to wash them in such a way that they neither wear out nor carry diseases, how gentlepeople used to communicate by waving hankies around, and whether "mens" hankies are three times the size of "ladies" hankies because men are supposed to have bigger boogers, or what. I have so many questions about hankies and this book didn't answer any of them. Being informative was simply not the book's purpose.
   
   Although, it did show that geisha would sometimes carry a hanky with a silk butterfly sewn onto it over a lace hole, so that when she waved the hanky as she gestured, the breeze would pass through the hole and the silk butterfly's wings would flutter. That was cool.



2. I collect handkercheifs, and it was great to find a book about them, especially one as pretty as this!
   Thanks so much, I love it!

No comments about Boys.

No comments about T-shirt Art: Make Your Own Iron-on Designs (Klutz).

5 comments about Asian Ladies (Photo Book Series).

1. Uwe Ommer has done a beautiful job in this book. People sould just put aside all the pc thinking and psuedo intellectual critique and enjoy the book for what it is; an art book of various oriental women. Very well done, very tastful.
   
   If you like Asian women, beautiful photographs, and nude,sensual art, this book is for you. I highly recommend.



2. ...lower your expectations. The most interesting photo is the cover. This tells you everything.
   The price is pretty steep for what you get.



3. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
   
   It's a beautifully printed coffee-table book. Each page reprodcues one photo, at a scale large enough for lots of detail to come through. No text, just a beautiful young woman. Ommer presents a variety of faces and figures, many in settings that just emphasize the young woman's charm. The collection represents much of the variety in East Asian beauty, and gives good representation to the slim, elegant bust so distinctive to this population.
   
   As much as I like these photos, I found two things to wish for. First is that Ommer could have represented more of Asia in this collection - India is Asia, and is home to a half-billion samples of feminine beauty, none of which appeared here. Second was the way poses tended towards a sameness. They invariably captured the face, and usually the bust and torso. The whole woman has hips and legs, too, that complete the graceful curve of a female figure. These were under-represented by the 3/4 length portrait format that Ommer favors. And, a minor point, lack of titles and even page numbers makes it hard to discuss specific images.
   
   It's a lovely collection, and a complement to other collections that favor European features and figures. It could have been more, though.
   
   //wiredweird



4. There is a western stereotype that western men have about Asian women. This stereotype cuts across all geographical bounds and zeros in on the mythical, but probably non-existent image of the Asian woman as demure, sexually accomodating, and anti-feminist. In ASIAN LADIES, Owe Ommer has a pictorial on Asian women that feeds into this fantasy. The pictures are erotic, but decidedly not pornographic. They show good-looking Asian women that run the ethnic gamut from Chinese to Korean to Japanese. What this Asian spectrum reveals relates more to exposing the collective psyches of the assumed western reader than it does to the subjects themselves. As I flipped through the pages, I saw many sad-faced ladies who did not seem to know why they were chosen to be included. Any smiles they showed seemed to be nervous ones. Clearly, they were not full of the bouncy joy of life expressions that mark Playboy bunnies. So why would any western male buy this book? Perhaps he, as did I, simply may want to see a pictorial on lovely Asian women who fit nicely into the prepackaged ethnic slots that contain stereotyped images of ladies who needed a paycheck more than they did integity.



5. As a group, today's photographic artists lack the courage and fire to take the contemporary nude back from the pornographers. Unfortunately, a minority of the portraits in Uwe Ommer's Asian Ladies do anything to aid that worthy cause. Ommer's most consistently interesting photographs are the landscapes and still-lifes that separate the portraits. Although fair designs as a whole, Ommer's compositions lack originality. Worse still, the photographer's lens is too busy pushing clichés to take material note of the individual women who should be its primary work.

   The introduction compares Ommer to the 1890s author of "L'Asie Amourous" in his appreciation of bittersweet Asian femininity. Yet even the pen of "L'Asie" - who might be compared with a modern-day sex tourist - at least emphasized the individuality of his immediate conquest. Ommer does not. He appears afraid to deal head on with the bodies - and certainly the souls - of his subjects. The work is only superficially sensual and marketing characterizations of it as "erotic" or "transgressing... inhibitions" are absurd. Ommer in fact suppresses spontaneity and emotional (i.e. sensual) honesty. In some photos, the figure's lack of dress is irrelevant to the composition - begging us to question the point of using the nude.

   Ommer "tastefully" permeates his photos with obscuring affectations of incense, fans, opium and shades of fabric. Asian ladies thereby fall victim to orientalist themes and motifs - facets the photographer at times appears to value more than the women themselves. Although less offensive to conventional morality, such objectification is the same crime accused of the pornographer. The authentic humanity of the subject is exponentially less important than the attempted sale. In this case, Ommer the Tourist is selling a stereotyped "essence" of oriental womanhood - one inherently divorced from the reality of Asian women. This is reinforced by the absence of any model but the young and unflawed.

   Luckily, Ommer's approach does not stifle every personality that he photographs. Several models manage to break through the lens once context is minimized. Twin compositions half-way through the book each reveal a aquiline bronze figure, accented in a stream of white light but isolated amidst empty shadow. Other photographs portray candid moments - flashing eyes, red-gold fluidity, a hair falls out of place. Subtext makes these few portraits individually valuable to the authentic appreciator of photographic art. However, the collection as a whole is not worth its price.

No comments about Le Book New York 2007 (Le Book New York).

No comments about The Global Circulation of African Fashion (Dress, Body, Culture).

No comments about Artistic Nudes Volume #1 : The Natural Female Breast (Artistic Nudes).

No comments about Jewels of Fantasy: Costume Jewelry of the 20th Century.

No comments about Fashion & Graphics.