Love and Lust

From the award-winning photographer of Aperture’s Living with the Enemy, now in its fourth printing, comes Donna Ferrato’s second book, Love and Lust, a close-up look at human relationships. Ferrato’s first book tackled the difficult subject of battered women and, in doing so, made public an important issue that freed many women from the bondage of destructive relationships. Now, Ferrato turns her inquisitive eye on the broader theme of love in its many facets, from the emotional bond of a boy and his dog, to full-blooded sex orgies at private homes and public places such as Plato’s Retreat.

The constant question regarding Ferrato’s work is, “How does she get these astonishing pictures?” Readers will wonder the same as they page through these bold, sometimes shockingly intimate photographs. This is anything but a sentimental journey. Non-judgmental, wide-eyed, and completely embracing every expression of human emotion, Ferrato moves from puppy love to orgasm, from a peck on the cheek between friends to sexual role-playing, with the assurance of one who has been everywhere and seen everything on the relationship front. In these photographs, representing nearly thirty years of her work, Ferrato never seems heavy-handed or crude. Rather, there is always the sense that she is winking at the viewer, encouraging a relaxed acceptance of all the positive expressions of human feeling, be they childlike or fabulously steamy.

Donna Ferrato has won numerous awards for her work: the Crystal Eagle Award for courage in journalism from the International Women’s Media Foundation; the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Humanistic Photography; and the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography. Her photographs have been widely published in magazines such as Life, Time, People, Fortune and Stern, as well as in the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine. She is founder of the Domestic Abuse Awareness Project (DAAP).

Photographs by Donna Ferrato
Text by Donna Ferrato
Hardcover
6 1/2 x 9 inches
144 pages
978-1-931788-33-5
125 duotone and full-color images