Customer Reviews
Sexy, Self-Empowered Women Showing it All - By: Jack Gilbert, 04 Feb 2008 
The girl-next-door genre is way overdone, & it's probably not the description that Goliath should have used in marketing this new book from New York photographer, Peter Gorman. But despite my problem with the term, girl-next-door, this is a surprisingly good book of nude & erotic photography. And Goliath is to be commended for its extraordinarily high production quality of this 7x10" picture-packed publication.
This is Peter Gorman's fourth book & it follows a similar path outlined in his previous two books, Stripped Naked & Naked Rooms. The central theme here is "everyday" women alllowing Gorman entry into their homes, so that he can photograph each of them in the nude & occasionallly acting out their sexual fantasies. Masturbation plays a role here & may be what prompted the title, Touch. But although erotica is a quality laced throughout this work, it could more aptly be described as confident women, parading themselves & their sexuality, not so much to titillate as to affirm their own sense of freedom, self worth, & self empowerment. They are beautiful, they are sexual, & they are quite comfortable with that level of self awareness.
All images are color based & appear to be shot in a mixture of natural & flash lighting. There is a pseudo-documentary feel to much of the work, with very little use of background blur or other depth-of-field tricks. Everything in their rooms, in their yards, & on their bodies is sharp & clear - Gorman captures everything. Each photograph is presented in full-page format with the opposite page white & barren, driving full attention to the featured image. So, although there are over two hundred pages, there are 106 photographs of around thirty models.
