Roy Stuart: V (Volume 5) (v. 5)
In his new book, the fifth to date, he hones this exploration into something more forthright, close to film. The photos "tell" short stories, like short films, and the models become actors, their movements caught in freeze frame studies, between portrait and narrative. Sex is more explicit, while retaining some of the mystery characteristic of erotic images. A DVD, which comes with the book, contains several scenes from which the photos are taken, with extracts from the "Glimpse" DVD series and Stuart's full length feature film, The Lost Door. The overall impression produced by this work is that Stuart has introduced eroticism into pornography, or vice versa. He clouds issues, confuses codes, disorientates and takes risks, all the while behaving as an artist who is exploring a new middle road - fusional, original and hard to follow, but promising. Somewhere between simplistic X-rated films and pure eroticism, between trivial reality and abortive dreams, he seeks and finds a third way, the royal way.