Thai photographer and professor Ohm Phanphiroj has one of those impressive, jam-packed resumes that can easily leave one feeling less than adequate at best.  Or sheer lazy at worst. However, it’s not just the number of university degrees he has earned or the prestigious positions he has held that impress one most, but the sheer quality of his work, which at times can literally leave one breathless. 

Phanphiroj’s images of naked men assume such a remarkable fluidity and honesty that they present their sexuality in almost a wholesome way, yet at the same time achieve a sensuality that projects their attractiveness that is impossible to avoid. A point that he makes when he calls himself a straight man who loves men from afar. He also  added, “I want my subjects to be as real, as imperfect and as fucked up as life itself.”

Phanphiroj’s new book DESIRE takes the art of male nudity to a new level out of the closet and into the open …… and as the book says ….. putting straight men in my bedroom

We asked Phanphiroj how he came up with the book’s title, and he told us ‘Desire brings together everything that has defined my artistic journey: beauty, vulnerability and sexuality.’ He describes his new book not as a return but a continuation, a slow fire he has tended for years. Heterosexual men have always fascinated him, he tells us. Not because they’re forbidden, but because they prompt questions he can’t resist poking at.