Choi Yongho(최용호) is sexiest guy in Korea!
Choi Yong Ho・ Victor Choi・ 최용호・Korean Fitness Model
Advertising has turned from a reliance on western faces and bodies to sell luxury. South Korea's fashion and lifestyle magazines feature Koreans. Japan's are Japanese. Chinese models, both men and women, are increasingly and beautifully on show. The look of the 21st-century will be Asian - more precisely, Eurasian. In serious photography, the male icon, such as captured by the late American artist Robert Mapplethorpe, is often confused with gay erotica, so confronting is the image is the naked male to some people. That will probably be an obstacle these two Hong Kong photographers will need to overcome if they're to reach a wider audience, so rarely has the distinct beauty of the Chinese male form been presented. Yip is very much the contemplative artist, all careful poses and precise lighting in black-and white, colour and sepia.
Details of camera, lens and film used for each shot are given in an index, along with notes about what the photographer was dying to capture of the model through the lens. His use of film rather than digital would seem to reflect a growing consensus among serious photographers that pixels lack the subtlety and flexibility of emulsion sharp but ultimately unforgiving and lacking in depth. Yip's models are Chinese from Hong Kong. Singapore, Taiwan. the mainland and the US, as well as a Thai-Chinese, Japanese and Korean. He says in the introduction that he wanted his models to show themselves, to let the camera shoot beyond the facade or skin and muscle torso and chest. The best images in The Asian Male, the ones that stretch beyond the private portrait, have an air of gentleness and innocence about them, but also a sense of confidence and independence that illustrate the emergence of new type of man. --Tim Cribb, South China Morning Post.
