Bertolotti explores the history of nude photography, from the first academic snapshots all the way to the most audacious avant-gardists. Organized chrono-thematically and accompanied by socio-cultural analysis, this book includes the works by Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Araki, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jean-Loup Sieff.

A hilarious book of essays from comedian, "This American Life" contributor, and rock god Hill. His collection of mind-blowing essays recollect real life experiences of a grown man with red-hot action, startling emotion, and borderline futuristic insights.

Smith reveals how images of the nude were used at all levels of Victorian culture, from prestigious high-art paintings through to photographs and popular entertainments; and discusses the many views as to whether these were legitimate forms of representation or, in fact, pornography and an incitement to unregulated sexual activity.

The representation of the nude in art remained for many centuries a victory of fiction over fact. Beautiful, handsome, flawless its great success was to distance the unclothed body from any uncomfortably explicit taint of sexuality, eroticism or imperfection. In this newly updated study, Frances Borzello contrasts the civilized, sanitized, perfected nude of Kenneth Clarks classic, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956), with todays depictions: raw, uncomfortable, both disturbing and intriguing. Grittier and more subtle, depicting variously gendered bodies, the new nude asks awkward questions and behaves provocatively. It is a very naked nude, created to deal with the issues and contradictions that surround the body in our time. Borzello explores the role of the nude in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, looking at the work of a wide range of international artists creating contemporary nudes. Her fascinating text is complemented by a profusion of well-chosen, unusual and beautifully reproduced illustrations. The story begins with a tale of life, death and resurrection an investigation into how and why the nude has survived and flourished in an art world that prematurely announced its demise. Subsequent chapters take a thematic approach, focusing in turn on Body art and Performance art, the new perspectives of women artists, the nude in painting, portraiture and sculpture and in its most extreme and graphic expressions that intentionally push the boundaries of both art and our comfort zone. The final chapter illustrates radical developments in art and culture over the last decade, focusing in particular on artworks by women, trans artists and artists of colour. Borzello links these works to their art-historical and political predecessors, demonstrating the continually unending capacity of the nude to disrupt traditional hierarchies and gender categories in life and art.

TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - Special edition! ""Fascinating for what it tells us about the history of body images and social codes."" -The Independent, London