“”I think I was going for an innocence and a vulnerability,” Gorman said. “For me, those are areas that add a tremendous amount of sexuality and sensuality to a male or female nude.”Gorman said he also chose to stay away from “overly muscular, overly masculine guys.”
“I had plenty of kids come to see me who were beautiful and who had great bodies, but they came in with too much confidence,” the photographer said. “I was not looking to photograph people who were going to be exhibitionists.”
Gorman was looking for men with strong eyes and lithe bodies, qualities that he said made the subjects more accessible. A lot of nude photography is interchangeable, he said, with too great an emphasis on physique.
“I’m trying to focus more on the individual and allow you to come into the picture,” he said. “And then the body, hopefully, is just a nice adornment to what you’ve already discovered.”
Some may find the photography too pristine and pretty, but Gorman welcomed the criticism: “Some people are going to love it, some people are going to hate it, some people are going to think it’s not relevant. But the cross-banter is always good.”
Gorman does bristle at the way in which male nude photography is often perceived. Nudes were commonly accepted in antiquity, and the past century has had its share of photographers who have depicted them, from Man Ray and Edward Weston to Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritts.
“Now it’s more in vogue to say, ‘I can’t believe this, it’s gay,’ ” Gorman said. “It’s a wanton amount of labeling. People don’t look at female nudes and say, ‘Oh, these are heterosexual.’ ”
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