Blake Little
Queer the vote, 2022
Photography by Blake Little
Edited by Frank Rodriguez
Designed by Sean Adams
Primary
10.25″ x 12.5″ Hardcover Book
180 pages w/ 166 Photographs
Photography: Blake Little
Edited by Frank Rodriguez
Designed by Sean Adams
https://www.blakelittle.com/book-primary/
“PRIMARY” usually refers to what comes first or is most important. We come into this world without clothes and all the associations and signifiers they bring. It’s where we start. To be naked is often to be revealed, stripped down, raw and honest.
Followers of Blake Little’s male portraiture have long been asking him to make a book of nudes. Blake has never been interested in creating pornography or even overt erotica so he was reluctant to take this on. His focus has been on capturing his particular vision of gay men and the authenticity his models. Nudity is still a huge taboo in our society and many declined being photographed for fear of losing their jobs or shocking their family. The brave and bold men featured in Primary had many different personal reasons for choosing to let Blake shoot them without clothes. Many found freedom and catharsis from societal hangups by letting their shields (and pants) down. Blake found his way to make nudes into real and complex portraits, as sophisticated as the photos in his earlier books and just as rich in terms of settings and compositions.
Shot over four years, both in his studio and on locations around North America and Europe, this is his biggest and most ambitious book by far with 166 photographs in a large hardcover format, once again designed by the award-winning Sean Adams.
Interior here
Dichotomy
12.25″ x 12.5″ Hardcover Book
82 pages w/ 102 Photographs
Photography: Blake Little
Designed by Sean Adams
Publisher: State of Man
ISBN1880777398
Work
10.25″ x 12.5″ Hardcover Book
124 pages w/ 96 Photographs
Photography by Blake Little
Edited by Frank Rodriguez
Designed by Sean Adams
https://www.blakelittle.com/book-primary/
The need to work is essential. It’s what Blake does best. We are fortunate to have this collection of images. They are a testament to the humanity of the subjects and the obsessions of the photographer.”
Bob Mould
Preservation
9.5″ x 12.5″
144 pages
Hard Cover Cloth Bound
68 Photographs
Edition of 750
Photograph by Blake Little
Edited by Frank Rodriguez and Blake Little
Designed by Sean Adams
https://www.blakelittle.com/book-primary/
From Slate.com
Blake Little was photographing a “bear” when he decided to try out a few tongue-in-cheek ideas—so he introduced some honey. Inspired by the experience, the following week, Little invited a friend to come by his studio to take some portraits with honey covering his head and beard and eventually his body.
“I realized that everyone has to be encased in it and that’s what made the most powerful image,” Little said about his series “Preservation.” From there he began advertising for models, finding people on Craigslist as well as through agencies that represented professional dancers and models, and started shooting in a larger studio working on the series from 2012 until around the middle of 2014.
Although there is a fascination with the process of how the images were made, Little said that the idea is really a celebration of the human form, something that took on a universal quality when the honey—he used 1,000 pounds of it a week during shooting—was added.
Since it’s release, the work has gone viral, something Little said has been “a little surprising and a little overwhelming.”
Manifest
10.25″ x 12.5″
124 pages
104 Photographs
Edition of 1,500
Hardcover
Clothbound, with Dust Jacket
Edited by Frank Rodriguez
Designed by Sean Adams
https://www.blakelittle.com/book-manifest/
Blake Little’s photographs do everything they can to answer these challenges short of reaching out and shaking the viewer’s hand in a bone-crunching grip. These people look like men, like real men. When next I need to load a ten-foot length of walnut trunk into my truck bed, I will think longingly of these stalwarts and then resume trying to ‘lift with my legs.’ Do they like peanut butter? Do they like men? I don’t give a shit. Whether they are about to engage in work or play, the men pictured herein are about as manly as they get.
Foreword by Nick Offerman
The Company of Men
10.25″ x 12.5″
132 pages
89 Photographs
Edition of 1000
Designed by AdamsMorioka
https://www.blakelittle.com/book-company/
To get the images for The Company of Men, Blake had to strike up a conversation through his lens with the men on the other side of his camera.
It is the power of that immediacy, understanding and trust which makes the images so striking. Blake was after something, the truth of his pursuit is not lost on the faces of the men in this book, it is in fact the thing that gives them such collective power… The honesty in these portraits is immense.
– Foreword by Henry Rollins
