Watermark

Water Water Everywhere

WATERMARK is the first monograph of the images of the male nude by San Francisco based fine art photographer Mark Jenkins. It won't be his last! Publisher Bruno Gmunder Verlag will doubtless encourage Jenkins to format another book soon, so popular has this particular debut book become.

In the genre of fine art photography of the male nude it is gratifying to find photographers who will take a theme to unite the works included in the collection, and even nicer when the photographer has the security of expanding the concept of the theme to provide the greatest variety of images. As one might imagine from the title WATERMARK the unifying theme here is water, water as it is captured in space in its gravitational motion, as it coats the surface on which it lights, and it bounces back and forth from source to receptacle, and as it is confined or simply in the distance. Of course the theme in no way interferes with the fact that first and foremost focus is on the models so carefully chosen by Jenkins. These men are more like Greek Gods, works of art that Bernini, Michelangelo, and Donatello would have selected as models!

Each of the photographs in this book appears as though Jenkins carefully paced the lighting and the response of water on the figures. The result is immaculate and elegant duotone photographic art that is creatively presented, and the results are studies in intense masculinity and sensuality.

Grady Harp