Charles Moriarty announces new coffee table book with bodybuilder Brock Yurich

Photographer Charlies Moriarty, perhaps best known for his book Back To Amy which captured the early years of Amy Winehouse, has announced a new coffee table book.

Entitled Brock, the upcoming book is a collaboration with the American actor and bodybuilder Brock Yurich. Moriarty has been shooting Yurich in different locations including New York and London since 2021.

The photographer is currently fundraising via Kickstarter to finance the remaining shoots to complete the book, with a view to releasing it this September.

“I first connected with Brock over Instagram and for years we conversed about working together,” Moriarty explained on the Kickstarter page. “Finally in 2021, after Covid died down, we collaborated on two occasions in New York over one week, both in the studio and on location in an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan.

“The images are what you would expect from a first meeting of individuals, broad in their engagement while two people are figuring one another out.”

The photographer has compared his work with Yurich to that of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work with Lisa Lyon, suggesting that both collaborations share similar themes. “I just get to take them further into a space that is not just from the gay perspective of the photographer but also that of his subject,” Moriarty suggested.

“Understanding the interplay of gender and queer identity in the bodybuilding arena whilst also celebrating and commenting on that unique sphere,” he went on. “Certainly Brock presents as a traditional masculine bodybuilder, but I want to get under that surface. Who is Brock outside of that arena? Where has he come from and where does he want to go in life?    

Moriarty’s ambition is for Brock to be a 144 page fine art coffee table book, printed on “exquisite” 250gsm paper. 

You can visit the project’s Kickstarter page to learn more here.