Howard Roffman Pictures of Fred

New/Hardback 

PICTURES OF FRED has, first-rate, candid and more formal portraits of this very young, handsome, French model and gymnast. However, the accompanying text is so precious that it becomes annoying, esp. with several "typos" in only two pages of text. And since this descriptive essay is very brief, appearing at the beginning of the volume with portions reproduced in various other sections of the book, I wondered why it was even included. Why not have a writer as good as Roffman is a photographer write the text and make it much less manipulative? Some of the phrases are actually as melodramatic as the kind found in paperback, romance novels (i.e. "One night I found Fred alone. He seemed sad, withdrawn...The conversation shook me. Fred had kept his wisdom hidden...By the time the sun set, we were both drained. We collapsed on his couch, and he fell asleep in my lap, naked, vulnerable.")
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I'd like some more pictures and alot fewer words, please.