Malerie Marder is one of the first practitioners of a style of high-colour photography that came out of Yale in the late 1990s, where Katy Grannan and Justine Kurland were her contemporaries under the tutelage of Gregory Crewdson, who contributes a preface here. Debunking the myths that have developed around this group, this book tells the story of Marder's first commissioned shoot: how a friend invited Malerie to photograph her with her lover, naked and in the anonymous setting of a motel room. This seminal experience set the tone of Marder's work for the next decade, her nudes depicting emotional nakedness and vulnerability in relationships. This beautifully illustrated book is the first to bring these works together and to bring Marder to a wider audience.