Usually I am quite an admirer of the books published by Taschen. Great value for money and various topics; from Art to Pornography.

In 2000 they published a book called Asian Ladies. Photographer Uwe Ommer filled 160 pages with photo’s of Asian beauties. Well, unfortunately not all models are so beautiful. There are only a handful that have the natural look that I like. But because taste is very personal, I will not go into that any further. Take a look at some samples at his site.

What I find rather disappointing about the book, is the photography itself. It’s semi-artistic and of poor quality. The photo’s lack imagination and the settings and poses are very cliche. Ofcourse there are some good pictures in the book, but I get the idea that this was a quick job. I imagine Ommer travelling around South-East Asia, shooting every woman he can pursuade to pose for him 😉

I am not sure what else this Ommer guy has done (besides a smilar book called Black Ladies), but I am not impressed by his work in this book. According to Taschen he is ‘a sought-after commercial photographer’.The book itself looks fine. Luxury hardcover, glossy paper and the price was right (about 15 Euro’s). You can still buy it at Amazon, but now it’s more expensive; $45. That is way too much! Don’t buy it unless you absolutely are a collector of photobooks of Asian women. Speaking of such books; does anybody know if there are any good books in this category? Ofcourse there is the Sung Hi Lee book Butterfly and the books by Nobuyoshi Araki. But they are rather expensive and have limited availability.