Jock Sturges: Radiant Identities Paperback – June 15, 2005

As always, Jock Sturges's artistic sensibility delights the eye and challenges the viewer! I once had the opportunity to view one of Jock's shows at a photo. gallery in Denver.As a fine-art photographer myself, I am rarely moved by another photographer's work so much that it invokes a kind of change in my life!As I viewed Jock's large, warm B&W images of his people on the beach, I was drawn into the scenes as though I we're standing there next to him - taking in every nuance of the surroundings - as though I was the one fortunate enough to be documenting the experience!While no book can ever come close to recreating the beauty and emotion that a large selenium print on the wall does, "Radiant Identities" portrays a nice cross section of Jock's work.If you're comfortable in your own skin, or you need to be challenged to be, I highly recommend this book, along with all of his others!

Excellent photo journal of author's family. Photo's are B/W and show the expressions on the faces of the subjects. Avery good "show and tell" of a quickly growing family members, for adult photographers.

I truly enjoyed those fabulous pictures, full of particular quiet emotions. Jorge Sturges did a great job, capturing beauty and melancholia of pubescent children and their families. Natural life in natural environment captured with a master of photography. It is truly full of human nature feelings. No tricks, no pretending, just life.

Many of the images in this book hold me totally spellbound, even after enjoying it (in hardcopy) for several years. I experience a sense of "beckoning", a call to enter the images and pursue the stories that most of them so strongly hint at. The cover photo so captivated me that I bought a official/authorized print of it.

While Jock Sturges has almost flawless control of the technical aspects of the photographs in this book (excellent exposure and placement of the subject matter): the moments it captures leave much to be desired.Perhaps it is simply that I am looking at it from the wrong perspective, and I am expecting of it something that cannot be expected of straight portraiture, but I don't believe this to be true.The black and white photographs are very well done in that they have wonderful transitions of gradient tones, and the subject matter is always very clear and concise with little confusion as to what aspect of the photo you should be concentrating on. What i don't like is the overall emotional aspect of the photographs, and the reactions of the people in them. For me, there is only 2 photographs in this book that have any sense of emotive quality that i would actively seek out - and even those two photographs have problems.- In the photograph of the boys holding hands, and in several others, I see apprehension on the faces of the subjects. I see someone looking at a camera not knowing if they should be going about there normal business, and someone who is unfamiliar with the person taking the photograph. It is not outright anger or dislike - just apprehension.- In the photograph of the girl and the boy leaning on each other on the beach; it is a beautiful sentiment and it is well done, but you can see, you can FEEL the boy looking at the photographer with a sense of protectiveness, a sense of disconnection from his activities in order to be watchful of this person taking photos of them.In all but a few of the photographs - the person being photographed is looking at the photographer or the camera itself. this is fine in most photography - but the setting of this book is not the studio, and it is among other people. I would like to have expected an interaction with the people around the subjects, with the surroundings, or at VERY LEAST, an internal reactions of the subject themselves (wonder, happiness, sadness, questioning, SOMETHING).I am of the school of photography that believes in capturing the essence of a moment, the little tricks the body does to convey an emotion, that which is a moving changing thing, that has a reason, a direction; an engagement. You'll see them every now and again in the people your around a lot, a furrowed brow, an upturning of the mouth.A big part of being able to capture such moments requires that the person never be looking at the camera. they should be looking at you. at the person behind the camera - and not at a photographer, at a person with whom they FEEL something towards. and if they are simply looking at the camera, there should be something more in it then simple apprehension.Personally, this book fails in many ways for me. It is titled "Radiant Identities" - but I see no identities, I see no emotional personality, I see only bodies who are unsure and aware of a man taking photographs of them. I give this 3 stars because the techniques are well done; and because as a resource for artists, it has a few selections that are wonderful anatomical and surface muscle studies that are hard to find elsewhere. From the perspective of art however I would give it a 2 at best.

I was a little disappointed in the book. Some of the pictures were truly beautiful to look at, some were absolutely haunting, but some of them seemed to be merely an excuse to photograph nude girls. I know that some of these models were his daughters, and I think that is where I had the problem. It seemed from the expressions on the faces that they did not want to be photographed under those conditions (nude), and the look of pain in their eyes took away any of my enjoyment of the composition, lighting, pose, etc. I am far from prudish, but perhaps the seeming increase in pedophile crimes reported in the news has sensitized me. I would love to sit down with the models and hear directly from them how they felt about posing. I am sure that some feel that that is part of the allure of Jock Sturges' work; for me, I found it more than a little disconcerting and perhaps even bordering on child abuse. Having gotten that off my chest, let me say that the good pictures in this book are great and are the type that you can look at for long periods of time, as with Diane Arbus' photos. I think that, ideally, I would give it 3-1/2 stars. I didn't really, really like it, but it was better than "it's OK".

This is a book of black&white photographs by Jock Stutges. Jock and his style may not be for everyone, but if you like his approach, this book is quite iconic in his world of photographic images.

I appreciate Jock Sturges's ability to get his subjects to be normal, comfortable people while he photographed them nude. Beautiful.