Polaroid Encounters: 1998-2009 presents more than 200 Polaroid images taken over an 11-year period from 1998 to 2009. The photographs include friends, models, bodybuilders, tattooed men, toughs, hook-ups, and ex-con boyfriends shown in various stages of undress and arousal. The release frames the work against the shift from print and in-person cruising to internet-driven adult content and dating apps, noting 2009 as a turning point when Mandate ended and Grindr launched. The images are described as raw and intense, offering candids and poses with a focus on macho masculinity and musculature. The book is presented as a limited edition and follows earlier photo books by Michael Alago.
"Polaroid Encounters: 1998-2009 is the latest book by former music industry vet-turned-photographer Michael Alago. Consisting of more than 200 Polaroid images, Alago photographed friends, models, bodybuilders, tatted up toughs, hook-ups, and even ex-con boyfriends in various stages of undress and arousal over the 11-year period from 1998 to 2009."
"As the book's release points out, this is the same year (2009) that adult magazine Mandate ceased publication amid the rise of the internet. It's also the year Grindr arrived on the scene. You can do the math. How about we take this to the next level?"
"Described as "sexy, self-contained shrine to macho masculinity in all its flexing, flirting, full-frontal glory," Polaroid Encounters features candids and posesd shots of the male subjects with a raw intensity rarely seen in today's Instagram world of endless filters and perfect lighting."
"Upon leaving the music business in 2003, Alago rekindled his passion for photography having first picked up a Polaroid camera in the '90s. His reinvention documenting gritty male portraiture continues with 142-pages of erotically-charged musculature in Polaroid Encounters."
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