The British fashion photographer Miles Aldridge is known for his decadent colour-drenched images depicting women in erotic dreamlike settings. Some stem from personal experience (a fashion feature portraying a woman being seduced in a Rolls recalls an adolescent romp with his girlfriend); others are simply the product of an overactive imagination. All of them begin as rather crude sketches.

In his new book, Miles Aldridge: Pictures for Photographs (Editions 7L/Steidl, $125), he has set these doodles, which serve as a kind of a storyboard, against the actualized photos, offering insight into the way he works. ‘Certainly, I’m not the first man to draw naked pictures of women and wonder how to make them come to life,’ he noted drolly.

In conjunction with the book’s publication, Mr. Aldridge’s first solo show in the United States opened at the Steven Kasher Gallery on May 28. On view is a vivid range of photos and drawings; and on June 2, an exhibition that recreates one of his fashion shoots for Num? magazine – a model riding a carousel horse (above left) – will go on display in the window of Henri Bendel.