Last Day of Summer - Tapa dura

"In the fifty-eight images of this handsome, cleanly designed monograph, Sturges sustains a delicate balance on a very precarious wire. He engages us through the tension of polarities: between public and private, between tact and frankness, between childhood and adolescence, between male and female, between artist and model...His purity of intent shines through in the images. His struggle is to observe and render his subjects in all of their complexities, trembling on the cusp of change. The result of this long-term, communal effort is one of the most clear-eyed, responsible investigations of puberty and the emergence of sexuality in the medium's history, making a metaphor of the metamorphosis from child to adult."--A. D. Coleman, "The New York Observer"
"This is a truly beautiful and compelling group of photographs, an expression of innocence not lost by knowledge."--Eric Fischl
"The gelatin silver prints luxuriate in textures of sand, flesh, cloth, tide pools and gentle waves...superbly printed, expressive in their modulations of light and joyful tonalities...the high mark of Sturges' work is its naturalness, its gentle attentions to the pleasure that can be found in life."--Kelly Wise, "The Boston Globe"

The photographs of Jock Sturges are the record of people he cherishes: mothers and daughters, friends, children. Before his 8 x 10 camera, they show their relationship not only to one another, but also of the inner self to the world. Magical in their detail, these images are a collaboration of trust and admiration between artist and subject. Jayne Anne Phillips's compelling prose both illuminates the photographs and explores the unending sensuality and complexity of the bond between mother and child.

Whether photographing on naturist beaches in the south of France, in the communes of northern California, or in the affluent, East Coast summer resort of Block Island, Jock Sturges is at home with his subjects. Many of them are families with whom he has deep ties and whom he photographs as they are, clothed or nude, revealing the iconography of family affection. Each summer Sturges returns to visit the friends whose uninhibited grace, warmth, and beauty he so lyrically captures. He is now making pictures of girls and boys whose parents he first photographed as children.

In 1990 the Federal Bureau of Investigation entered Jock Sturges's San Francisco studio and seized his work, implying violation of child pornography laws. Citizens, artists and the media responded with outrage. With The Last Day of Summer, Aperture accords to Jock Sturges's humane and lovely visions the dignity and respect it so richly deserves.