EQUIPOSE the book
Christopher Makos has done the impossible: he has successfully elected to extend his special gifts as a portrait artist of famous people and as a sensual documentarian of the male nude to the realm of animals. EQUIPOSE is a survey of supple and wondrously articulate images of horses that goes far beyond the curious eye and enters the realms of sensuality/spirituality. Makos uses the same observation skills for which he has earned acclaim in books and magazines and applied those skills to capturing the musculature, the sheen, the power and the disparity between the surface and the underlying massive musculature of the horse. In tender close-up details Makos allows the light and his eye for detail to marry and the result is our being able to observe the veins, the individual flicks of the mane, the eyes, the torsos and the legs of these beautiful animals is inspiring. If it sounds as though this portfolio is about sensuality then the reader is justly prepared for this particularly satisfying foray into yet another realm of the prodigious gifts of Makos. I am reminded of the play 'Equus' in which a boy's psyche is closely bound to the horse. That is the kind of romanticism that Makos captures. And the results are stunning! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 05