With Sombra, Afanador outdoes himself. Combining elegant, erotic portraits and nudes of men with a selection of opulent still-life tableaux that have been inspired by early European paintings, this is a sumptuous book that revels in the sensuous and the beautiful. Sombra draws on Afanador's signature theme of the male nude as an odalisque-like figure. His eye inevitably captures the delicate, feminine details that define a particular aesthetic of male beauty. Afanador's images pay homage to early sources: Nadar, daguerreotypes and the idea of the photograph as precious object, Baron von Gloeden's photographs of young men, Man Ray's solarized images, and photographs of Nijinsky and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Provocative and revealing, Afanador's Sombra males are always elegant and luxuriant, always classical and beautiful in their eroticism. Sombra will appeal to collectors of fine art photography books as well as to connoisseurs of erotic iconography of the male figure.