Cult of Boys

This book it’s great photographs are very late 90’s/2000’s raunchy. Great addition to my collection the composition on each page and the style it’s amazing!!!

I love how it was put together, scrapbook style. And I just overall really enjoy this book. As a 23 year old fan of swooshy haired boys, I'm a huge fan. And Toyin is so honest and it is so evident that she poured her heart and soul into this. The photography is wonderful. The photos are vibrant and her commentary is so honest. For the price, the quality is amazing. The pages are so thick, I'm always checking twice to see if there are two stuck together. And it's a lengthy one too.

Photos of boys are nice and unique

I started to buy this book, than I read some reviews. The reviews had this book with photos of young people. No Nudity. Well, I was not interested in a book with young people and no nudity. I decided not to buy the book, then I read something somewhere that the book was done in very good taste. After going back and forth with the reviews I decide to buy and I am glad I did. There is really no nudity in the book, There may be one or two pictures that may be down right nude. At this point I am glad I did buy this book. Some of the kids are really good looking (Cute - for a guy who likes young guys). I would look at this book time and again. If anyone is interested and has the money. I would say look into looking into finding a physical copy and look at and decide. I sure would buy this book.

Crisp and creative artwork

Toyin Ibidapo is a much better photographer than this book suggests. In her mid-thirties, of Nigerian descent and living in London she is a well respected fashion photographer and has made many music videos. This book is obviously a labour of love for her and some 250 photos are presented in scrapbook style, heavily annotated with her personal recollections. But for me the vast majority of the photos are too rough, too primitive to be truly memorable. And yet I do find this collection more interesting and far more challenging than the sanitised and deodorised shots emanating from Howard Roffman and the Bel Ami fun crowd. In stark contract to the rough and ready snapshots in the main body of the book, some of which go back 15 years or more, is the "Ode to ..." section at the back of the book, in which Ms Ibidapo has chosen a portrait of each of eight models for whom she has the most affection, and provided a background to her relationship with the model. Here we find an Ode to Dominic Brider, a remarkably attractive model who features on the cover of the book. It is clear that Ms Ibidapo regards many of the young men featured in this book as family and is anxious to keep in touch with them. This book is devoted to all the young men and women who feature in it, and their names are all listed in an appendix. The book is remarkably chaste and none of the boys are photographed nude, presumably because many of them were under 18 years of age at the time. There is a photo of a young man touching himself, but his hand has been taped over and the photo is annotated "too sexy for this book." So I think this book is a labour of love for the photographer, but the photos are in the main too scrappy and unsophisticated to hold the interest of the reader for very long.

This photographer was far ahead of the trend that has been seen on and off since the 2010s, of the fashion world toying with various forms of androgyny, not just that of changeable aspects like clothing and hair (seen since at least the 60s) but androgynous physical/facial traits in their models. She was setting that trend, if anything. The industry will play with the idea and then abandon it, play again and then abandon it. But it's clear that this artist had a legitimate devotion to androgyny, specifically androgynous male beauty, in both an aesthetic and deeper, human sense. When I first bought this book, mid-late 2010s, the fashion industry had just swung from its intense fascination with androgyny -- with some of Ibidapo's photographed models being at the forefront of it (Chris Arundel, Michael Tintiuc) alongside major names such as Andreja Pejic -- back into disinterest. But for some of us, that interest will be lifelong, as artists and as people. It is a very isolating life to lead in a very Normal™ world, where even those who don't hate, but apparently instead admire us enough to become imitators, are still simply average men and women with quirkily dyed hair and piercings, seeming to believe it is a weekend fashion statement and not a way of being, a permanent one that you have little to no choice in. Toyin Ibidapo in this book (and all of her work) made clear that she not only understood but loved those like us, in a lasting way. Her art here is an act of total devotion. It's also very fun, charming, down-to-earth and real, with a sense of humor through it all. (Her pun on her own name: "because I'm a toy, and I go in!"....) Very refreshingly: No pretension at all, which, who knows, may be a part of why we don't see much work from her, in that world, any longer (note the ultra-pretentious high-fashion-minded reviewer here who calls it "primitive" -- hm). As an artist I would love to see the work that didn't, or couldn't, make it into the book. Would also love to see the handwritten manuscripts photographed and used essentially as mounting paper throughout the whole book, and for them to be more legible.... What can be made out is inspiring. My own art follows a different but connected path in the people I depict, and it's a real relief to see anyone visibly making this work out here. This book got me through some of the darkest years. I lost the original copy to those, and will be buying another. If you share anything in common with this review, then it is more than worth buying, for that alone.

The book is scrupulously restrained — none of the subjects appear nude, almost certainly because most were minors at the time of shooting. One image ventures closer to the edge, visibly censored with tape and a self-deprecating note from the photographer acknowledging it crossed her own line. The project reads as something deeply personal, and that sincerity comes through. But sincerity isn't enough to carry a book. The photographs are too inconsistent, too technically modest to hold a reader's attention through to the end. I wanted to like it. I still don't.

The photos are decent, the boys are boys. The images and models are worth 4 or 5 stars (no nudity), but I was bothered by the contradiction in what the photographer wrote. She felt she truly captured the personalities of each subject in the photo, which I think is great. But she goes on to tell us that all the models are…paid models. I was disappointed by this, it ruined any idea of authenticity in the image. Models act, that’s how they make money. Maybe I missed something here, but I couldn’t look at the images the same way knowing they were composed.

Tiene un estilo de edición extraño, como si fuera un álbum de fotos que iban pegándose conforme se tomaban. Ninguna de las fotos me parece muy interesante, llama más la de la portada y la cual considero la mejor. No es algo que recomendaría

Livre de photos de jeunes hommes à majorité de portraits .peu de grands formats plutôt mosaïque de petites photos mais pas toujours très nettes à cause de l’effet recherché

Sehr schöner und erotischer Fotoband über Junx im schönsten Alter.... der Jugend.

Super novo, perfeito.