Caramel's Girls

Formerly a photographer for both Playboy and Penthouse, Ken Marcus’ philosophy towards glamour photography is more like what you’d expect from a landscape photographer. His approach is based around pre-visualization and attention to detail. I’m glad he’s focused most of his attention on BDSM these days with a diversity of beautiful models.

Born October 2, 1946 in Hollywood, California, Ken began his lifelong interest in photography at around age 5. Encouraged by his parents, he later established his first darkroom in the family basement at age eight and became active in amateur camera clubs and activities. Marcus spent 13 years studying with Ansel Adams, arguably America’s photographer laureate. From Adams, whom he met in his early teens through a photography workshop affiliated with the University of California at Idlewild, Marcus learned how to shoot fine-art black-and-white landscapes. “Up until the age of 13,” Marcus remembers, “I used my eyes, but I didn’t really know how to see. I was taught how to see by this great teacher/artist (Adams) who shared his incredible vision. To learn basic composition, he handed me a piece of black cardboard with a four by five inch hole cut out of the middle. I would hold that cardboard up in front of me as he would explain that out of all the worlds visual chaos, we can select the segments that are personally meaningful. That awareness changed my life and launched me into my lifelong pursuit of imagery”.At age 12, while on a camera club photo outing to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano, Ken produced an unusual picture of the statue of St. Francis of Assisi. This resulted in his first commercial sale to Paramount Pictures. The movie studio displayed a mural of his photo in the lobby at the world premiere and used it for promotion in exchange for several years worth of free movie tickets to Paramount Theaters. By the age of 15, Marcus had already set his career course, taking university-level photography classes at L.A.’s Art Center College of Design at night, while completing his secondary education during the day.

In 1965 at the age of 19, Ken established his studio on fashionable Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, where his business continues today. After several years as a successful advertising, commercial, and food photographer, his direction shifted toward fashion, beauty, glamour and nudes. Throughout his twenties, Ken’s commercial assignments included product and fashion catalogs, architectural interiors, food illustration, magazine editorials and advertising photography. Within five years, his work received national publicity and several Art Director’s Awards. By the early ’70s Ken work began shifting more toward beauty, fashion & glamour as he shot regularly for Max Factor, Frederick’s of Hollywood and other West Coast fashion clients. He has produced award winning photographs for editorial, entertainment and consumer clients. One of his more unusual, yet memorable early assignments was to photograph the instruction book for the famous Pink Pussycat College of Striptease (where dancers came from all over the world to learn the art and technique of strip-tease). About his start in glamour photography: “I really had no interest in commercial glamour. I was rather shy around women as a young man. It was a girlfriend who introduced me to the artwork of Gustav Klimt, particularly an image he had done of two women together that struck me with unusual force. From that inspiration, I first got interested in doing nude photography with the idea of exploring relationships between people. This was coinciding with the sexual revolution that was going on at the time. As the general community around me was exploring sexuality and eroticism personally, I was interested in exploring and documenting it visually”.

In 1972 Ken was selected as the first American photographer for Penthouse magazine as they published their first American editions. He was responsible for introducing the soft-focus technique that soon became a Penthouse trademark. Ken left Penthouse after three years to become the major contributing photographer to Playboy magazine. Bob Guccione challenged and overturned the ban against total nudity in the U.S. Supreme Court. This decision allowed portrayal of the human body in its entirety for the first time in America. Ken was amongst the first photographers to legally explore this new creative arena. His early pictorials were fantasy images of erotic and civil rights themes involving couples and models photographed through heavy, soft focus diffusion. This technique, while popular during the early part of the 20th century, had not been used in publication since the early 1920s. Ken crafted his own homemade diffusion filters (at the time there were none available on the commercial market). About the softer-focus approach to shooting nude models: “This so-called new style, which was really more like the old style of shooting erotic material back around the turn of the century, caught on like wildfire. I got really well-known for it in a big hurry. Most of the work I did at that time was of couples, two girls together or single girls in erotic situations, all portraying their sexuality as well as glamour”.  Penthouse’s fully nude pictorials created quite a stir in the publishing world as circulation broke all prior records. The massive publicity rapidly transformed Ken into one of America’s most famous glamour photographers. In 1974, Ken left Penthouse to become the West Coast Contributing Photographer at Playboy magazine, replacing several of their staff photographers. From 1974-’85 Ken’s work was featured regularly in Playboy’s 15 international editions. During that time he produced 41 Playmate layouts, over 100 calendars, covers and editorials and twice received Playboy’s ‘Photographer of the Year Award’. For eight years Ken exclusively photographed the famous Playboy Calendar. It was a luxurious, if hectic, life of first-class hotels, four-star restaurants and constant travel. “Our orders were, above all, to look like we were having fun at all times,” he recalls. But fun was not enough. “There was a period of several years when I was so busy with magazine assignments that I didn’t get into the darkroom at all, when I never shot anything for myself. I longed for this. I missed it. After I finally left Playboy, I spent more and more time working in my studio shooting models with the simplest of setups, getting away from the kinds of complex glamour things I had done. The work I do for my website now exemplifies that softer, simpler vision”.

“I like to take advantage of the diversity of lifestyles we have here in Los Angeles. The new work I’ve been doing has involved bondage, fetish and nude models. I really enjoy working with ballet dancers, body builders, performance artists, athletes and others involved in body self-expression and alternative lifestyles”.

Reflecting on his subjects from the fetish scene, Marcus is typically perceptive. “Fetish photography works best when the people being photographed are a part of the world from which the fetish element derive. The strength of the work has less to do with any particular fetish than with the effect of the fetish on the subject. You can take a wonderfully beautiful model, put her into fetish gear, and if she doesn’t relate to it sexually, why bother? What you end up with is a catalogue shot. You have to be where the real people are and they have to trust you enough to reveal who they are and how they want to be portrayed.”

In 1985 Ken ended his relationship with Playboy because of new copyright and work-for-hire policies that the magazine had imposed. Ken held strong beliefs regarding artists ownership of intellectual properties and copyright.  Shortly thereafter, Ken began shooting pictorials and centerfolds once again, for Penthouse. Meanwhile, new clients such as Jordache, Snap-on Tools, NAPA, APA, and Muscle & Fitness magazine quickly filled Ken’s schedule, as did numerous speaking engagements, seminars, video productions and workshops. He has produced hundreds of editorials, centerfolds, covers and calendars. His glamourous nudes have received many awards and much media publicity. Recognized as one of the nation’s top photographic educators, Ken has produced seminars, lectures, and workshops on the art and techniques of nude and glamour photography. For twenty five years he was a regularly featured speaker at national photographic conventions and international photo expo’s. His corporate sponsors have included Canon, Hasselblad, Pentax, Polaroid and Kodak.

Throughout his career, Ken Marcus has maintained an academic interest in photography. For almost 25 years, he has lectured, taught seminars and conducted intensive study workshops for photographers. A regularly featured speaker at national photo conventions and expos, Ken’s presentations drew large crowds and receive the highest reviews. More than 10,000 photographers have attended Ken Marcus seminars for an insight into the complex world of professional glamour and nude photography. Sponsored by corporations including Kodak, Hasselblad, Dynalite and Canon, and professional photographers’ organizations, Ken’s lectures and seminars were presented to professional groups throughout the world. Ken has appeared in Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore and in most of the United States. As an addition to his personal appearances, he has produced an award winning video series The Ken Marcus Glamour Workshops. This highly-successful, award-winning three volume video series on professional glamour techniques is considered the ‘bible’ of glamour photography. These videos explain professional production techniques for both studio and location glamour photography. Throughout his life, Ken Marcus has relentlessly pursued his interest in black & white, fine art photography.

Originally interested only in the landscape (Ansel Adams’ influence), Ken began taking serious interest in nude photography as art during the time that he was working with Playboy. His nude studies of ballet dancers were first exhibited in Los Angeles in the early 80s. In 1988 Ken was selected as the artist-in-residence for the Yosemite National Park Museum. His controversial images of nude models in nature were originally banned by the government, but are now shown as part of the museum’s permanent collection. Early in his photographic career, Ken Marcus was one of only two official photographers at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Not being a fan of rock-and-roll music, he didn’t realize the significance of the images of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Simon & Garfunkel, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and others. He put the negatives in a box and forgot about them until 2005, when a studio remodel prompted the rediscovery of the negatives.

For over 35 years, Ken Marcus ruled the roost of American erotic photographers. In addition to the hundreds of editorials that earned him international fame and recognition, he has traveled throughout the world exhibiting his erotic photographs in galleries, museums and seminar venues. Ken now is ’selectively retired’ from the commercial world of photography (occasionally shooting centerfolds for Penthouse) and is mostly involved with producing images for his website. Shooting erotica 2-3 days a week is Ken’s idea of’ ’selective retirement’. Ken Marcus.com is a site dedicated to Hardcore Bondage & Fetish. There are over 420 photo shoots with an average of 60 images each,  fetish channels, and live hardcore cameras 24 hours a day among other things. The picture gallery is very well done with high quality pictures and done very artistically to suit the bondage and fetish genres. Another feature the site offers is live video chat, where about 10 sites are given for you to select from. Some of these sites are Flirt 4 Free, Dungeon 4 Free and others. Overall this is a very nice site if hardcore bondage and fetish is one of your favorite forms of pornography.  There are over 85 videos, aprrox. 5 min. each in Quicktime (500k, 400×300) in browser only format. No downloads are available and that was the single problem I had with this site. However, that’s a miniscule detail when considering that. The subscription price is only $29.95 for 30 days. It’s amazing to experience the works of this photographic genius and it takes days to months just to digest the vast content.

Overall Rating: 96/100

Reviewed 4/26/10