"For the past two years I have been concentrating exclusively on a series of sepia-toned black and white images inspired by French Erotic photographs of the 19th century, and by the “Storyville Portraits” of E.J.Bellocq.  
With this series of images, I have allowed myself to be concerned solely with beauty and the pleasure of looking at it. Not the beauty of polished professional models, but of real women. I prefer to work with inexperienced or non-professional models. Each woman’s particularities and “imperfections” are what I find most interesting and beautiful. “Model” looks and standardized ideals of beauty have always left me cold. I try to photograph each model with the eyes of a lover, seeing each one of them as if they were the most beautiful women in the world. 
I have always detested the modernist aesthetic of faceless human forms on a blank background. Never remotely a minimalist, I have always admired old photographs for the richness, lushness, and texture of their settings. The context is almost as important as the model. In life, whenever we are in a position to admire a partner’s naked beauty, it is always in a certain context, and that becomes an integral part of the experience; the texture of satin sheets, for example, or the contrast of flushed white skin against a purple velvet pillow. These kinds of details become heightened to the point of fetishism during moments of intense intimacy. I try to bring this kind if intimacy and intensity to my photographs. Many of the props are things I have collected over 30 years of travel in over 85 countries. 
I work with a 4X5 camera, which enables me to fully bring out all the rich detail, which is further intensified by the sepia toning. This heightened intensity gives the images the quality of a dream or memory."

www.michaelberkowitz.com