Hay Mi Madre! New Photo Book, "Dominicanos," Features Men Of The Dominican Republic

Famed photographer, Ernest Montgomery, has captured some of the most beautiful men of the Dominican Republic in a new photo book, Dominicanos.

“If I could be a destination, I would be the Dominican Republic. It has become my alter ego,” said Ernest Montgomery. His new book, Dominicanos, has created quite a stir, visually.  He has captured something powerful and unique in his pictures. These images do more than exhibit and showcase Dominican male bodies. It gives them a voice. Visibility. And, an opportunity for the world to be invited into their lives, allowing us to imagine, wonder, and consider how beauty is designed. How it is created. Smart-fully crafted. And, above all else, how it shapes itself in refined places defying time and space.

“The Dominican Republic is sexy, seductive, engaging, and temperamental,” said Ernest. “This is where all my dreams are in color.”

Photographer, visual artist, artistic director, and Milwaukee native, Ernest Montgomery, is a critically acclaimed New York producer of commercial advertising campaigns working with clients such as Pepsi, Marc Jacobs, American Airlines, Wal-Mart, L’Oreal Paris, and Amtrak. Montgomery’s highly anticipated photo book, Dominicanos, marks his monograph debut. For many years Montgomery has photographed men of the Dominican Republic, where he resides part-time in Santo Domingo. This photo book is a collection of his most erotic works in one volume.

Montgomery, who earned his Master’s degree in Photography Education from New York University, has worked with models, and other various subjects and mediums to capture their pure essence and natural environments. Yet, he finds working with “everyday” people more fascinating and aesthetically natural. He has a gift of allowing his camera to tell their story, and reveal their souls through haunting and riveting images that draws the viewer in and gives them entrée into the intimate and personal space with his subjects. The juxtaposition of subject and the socio-political embodiment of culture, history, and identity reveal a powerful story often hidden in plain sight.

Montgomery is the quintessential photographer. He has the ability to combine the conventions of cultural beauty, natural environments, and, the male body in all its forms, with the glorification of beauty, exotic gaze, and prestige to the subject matter. Montgomery disrupts the tropes of portrait photography and interrupts the categories of masculinity, gender, and beauty aesthetics and repositions black and brown men in powerful and un-arresting engagement. His artistic work provides a visual erotic stimulation that seduces the viewer’s gaze away from the pornotrope of the male body, while at the same time, providing a provocative intellectual engagement with the mind.

You can order your own copy of Dominicanos, HERE!

Click on the images to enlarge, and enjoy!