Blake Little is a well-known Hollywood commercial photographer. His portraits of the rich, powerful and beautiful are often featured in many of the better upscale urban magazines, film marketing and consumer websites.
Little's first photo book, Dichotomy (State of Man Publishing/Colt Studio), got lost in a glut of black-and-white naked coffee table books when it was first released back in 1996. It was unfortunate because Little managed to achieve what other naked-guy books only try to accomplish: He turned the male form into an art. Everything else was just pictures of naked guys with great bodies, big dicks and nicely composed backgrounds, but that's not Little.
Little presented the male body as a mysterya storythat he leaves for the viewer's imagination to read into the photographs; Blake presented the symbols of men, mysteries and mythology.
It is not a book of photographs to be viewed casually. Blake's Dichotomy is a book worth a second and third look.
That was 1996. In the here and now of 2013, Blake has captured a new vision of men: big, burly, sexy, "bear" kind of guys. For this new book, In the Company of Men, Blake got smart and published the book himself with full control of the sales and marketing, making it available exclusively at www.inthecompanyofmen.com .
In the Company of Men is not about the bodies of these burly rough guys, but their tenderness and confidence in their eyes and the space they inhabit. The book is about though guys with sexy eyes.
For the record, I have not heard Little use the term "bear" very often when he describes his latest images, but bears are what these photos would generally be labeled. After all, Little did make a stop at Provincetown's Bear Week for a quick book signing, which was a smart marketing move. This time, Little's book is getting noticed and bought by guys not unlike the men in the book. Surprisingly, there are no nudes in this beautiful book of full color photographsand they don't need to be. For that extra touch of testosterone, Little has gotten Henry Rollins introducing his book. Fur with a punk edge (works for me!).
The success of In The Company of Men leaves more to be desired, and Little recently told me there is a sequel in the works called, Manifest. A smart move for such a beautiful book of images.
In his own life, Little has reached the "daddy" phase, and he is working hard to become a "muscle daddy." He is now frequently in the company of many muscle men at the Gold's Gym in Hollywood, Calif. Little is becoming one of the men he has been documentinghe is a man in the company of men.
See www.BlakeLittle.com .