This volume presents a retrospective of the work of Czech photographer Saudek, who combines eroticism and aesthetics in a distinct style using elaborately painted backdrops and interior walls, magical costumes, and props. The essay by John Wood (poet and photographic historian) and James Wood (curat

Ropp captures children's indescribable emotional aura.

Jan Saudek is the most famous living Czech photographer, and simultaneously the most provocative. For over four decades Saudek has created a parallel photographic universe, a two-dimensional home full of longing, peopled with the most extraordinary characters and colored by desire. The timeless strength of his hand-tinted photographs lies in their poetic compositions and their forceful pictorial language, with its overtones of medieval genre pictures and Baroque mythology.

Few living photographers are as consistently controversial and provocative as Joel-Peter Witkin, whose work elicits hostility and admiration in equal measure. Shocking and compelling, the photographs in this retrospective collection reach to the outer limits of human nature. 100 full-page reproductions, printed in four colors.

This is a collection that goes well beyond typical body-builder, calendar-boy images with photographs ranging from striking details of male anatomy to intriguing portraits.