Bodies and Souls: The Century Project

Book Description

Viewed in exhibitions by over 100,000 people across the continent--now a book! Frank Cordelle'ss work is an inspiring series of nude photographic portraits accompanied by personal statements. The subjects are more than 90 girls and women aged 0 to nearly 100 and of very diverse shapes, sizes, and conditions. They also write powerfully about their bodies and experiences.

Customer Reviews:

Bodies and Souls, The Century Project.......2007-09-27

It's hard to call this a book, as it is an experience of a lifetime.
If everyone would openly talk, violence would be drastically reduced. I am sorry to the brave women in this book who were harmed by someone's violence. The wowen are a testimony to courage. Frank's courage, as well, for following his heart and soul. As, art it is a monumental master peice. A must experience for all those who have suffered from hiding, secrets, and sexual violation.

Incredible! Powerful! Life-Affirming!.......2007-07-19

This is an incredibly powerful book I wish everyone could own. My 15 year old daughter and I read it together and it the experience was unforgettable! The photographs paired with the real, raw stories of these girls, young women and women opened up a dialog between my daughter and I that could not have happened in any other setting. This book looks at bodies and the lives behind them with a sense of dignity and truth that you rarely find.
Some images and stories may be disturbing and/or inappropriate for younger children, but for me this book was a powerful way to see body image in a healthy light for me and my daughter.

For my daughter.......2007-07-19

I bought it for my 14 year old daughter who at first thought it was 'yucky' but later appreciated the stories that accompanied the photos. Great job of using pictures to paint the story of challenges that so many women continue to overcome.

bodies and souls: the century project.......2007-06-30

The powerful images and stories in this book are empowering and educational. This book is an antidote to the media-generated myths surrounding women's bodies, depicting the truth, instead of fabrication. These are real people and real stories. I recommend it highly to anyone's mother, daughter or sister.

Reality.......2007-05-15

Frank Cordelle's " The Century Project" is a remarkable work of female nudity and perception,concept and composition.It's a revelation of humanity.

Average customer rating:

Big Budget, Oddly Cold
Disappointing
Stunning Visual Images
Body Knots is a must have for photo & art fans

Body Knots

Manufacturer: Rizzoli
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0847822508
Release Date: 2000-06-03

Product Description

Body Knots is a creative collection by Howard Schatz that showcases his extraordinary photographs of the human body. Continuing his expansive exploration of the relationship between content and technique in his earlier bestsellers, Pool Light and Water Dance, the exquisite and ethereal images are unlike any seen before by photographic aficionados. Models are arranged in organic positions and colorized in rich, vibrant tones, making Schatz s work a truly original effort. You have to see it for yourself!

Customer Reviews:

Big Budget, Oddly Cold.......2004-08-05

While technically skillful, the work of Howard Schatz on the whole, and especially in "Body Knots" often seems to betray a somewhat cruel "use-factor" in regards the human beings that are his subjects. Going back as far as his portraits of successful women in the San Francisco Bay area, one portrait symbolically blinded the sitter with reflections on the lenses of her glasses. For follow-up, Mr. Schatz attempted to drown the San Francisco Ballet Company, and now he presents us with human beings decapitated, covered in gimmick-ridden colors or worse, and appearing more like teeth than human. While great art often attacks the human figure to reveal frailty and psychological depth (De Kooning, Bacon...), Mr. Schatz's work, in this reviewer's opinion, while occassionaly producing a graphically stunning image, only touches on the human soul with his photographs of young children, whose unrepressable energy for life perhaps could not be covered over, with technique or artifice.

Disappointing.......2000-08-07

I love Howard Schatz photography. He has created memorable imagry with his "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance" books. "Body Knots" is an evolution of "Pool Light" which was a sequel to "Water Dance". But not all evolution is happy or successful.

This book is far too gimmicky for my taste and I think Mr.Schatz is capable of far more creative imagry than this. How many of these images will appear in Madison Ave. advertising over the next year? Or is that the real goal here? One wonders. Perhaps if Mr.Schatz would have remained in California rather than moving to New York his artistic goals would not have been seduced by the scent of advertising contracts. I don't begrudge an artist trying to earn money but Mr.Schatz was a very successful surgeon before taking up lenswork full time--he isn't a starving artist.

What strikes me about "Body Knots" is that it is more a graphic arts presentation than it is fine art photography. Mr. Schatz, please go back and look at "Passion and Line" and "Water Dance". You created something wonderful there. Remember your motives?

Stunning Visual Images.......2000-06-26

If you're standing in a bookstore with a copy of Howard Schatz' new Body Knots in your hand, turn to Knot No. 184 near the end of the book. This image, one of my favorites, is a sly, humorous, enchanting image. Now you're hooked, right? But still not sure if you want to purchase the book ? Then turn to Knot 114 near the middle. This glorious, ingenious, repetition of the human form, part microscopic investigation, part seductive image, provides another reason to believe that Schatz is one of the most interesting, original, creative photographers at work today. In a stunning series of books, covering such themes as homelessness and the endlessly seductive charms of the human body, Schatz has opened our eyes to new ways of looking at the possibilities of photography. Body Knots, one of his most creative works, is a book for anyone who wants to be an artist, who wants to understand spatial possibilities, and, especially, wants to laugh over the imaginative limits of form and vision. This is one of those books that will make you look at the world differently.

Body Knots is a must have for photo & art fans.......2000-06-05

Today I was able to flip through a copy of the new photo book, "Body Knots" by Howard Schatz the photographer whose previous book, "Pool Light" is one of the most daring and beautiful photography books I have ever seen.

Most photographers would continue treading down the same artistic path, but not Howard Schatz aparently.

Body Knots is a collection of photos of humans entwined to make all sorts of puzzling shapes and images in the most beautiful color schemes and light.

There are collages of these strange, ambiguously naked images that create landscapes of the most surreal nature.

You don't even realize that you are staring at multicolored nudes entangled. The images seem more like alien shapes.

This is a coffee table book that people will flip through repeatedly and enjoy in a unique manner with each viewing.

Body Knots is a fun, and beautiful book that celebrates the human body with humor and new perceptions and challenges the viewer to rethink how they see things.

Amazon.com

It's hard to imagine a young woman born in 1883, in the middle of the repressive Victorian era, who possessed absolutely none of the prissy, small-minded modesty of the 19th century. But that is Imogen Cunningham at age 23 in 1906, shooting a nude self-portrait in which "the smooth skin of her shoulders, derrière, and legs glows within the darker context" of the weedy landscape where she is sprawled. There is no artifice about the picture, but her pale form is nonetheless transformed into a "floating arcadian Venus," as author Richard Lorenz aptly describes the image. Most of Cunningham's nudes are identified by name: John Bovington 2, Eye of Portia Hume, Jane Foster, Lake Tenaya, as if to say, "I have used this body, but it belongs to its owner." To one nude model she wrote, "Aperture is putting out a monograph on my work, and YOU are in it. I did not ask you because I know that when you are a work of art, so called, you are no longer yourself." This is Lorenz's fourth book of carefully selected Cunningham photographs, and its subject gives it special resonance. (It includes a chronology and a selected bibliography.) In it, Lorenz quotes a last snippet of Cunningham's writing, found among her papers after she died, at 94: "For it is in this inadequate flesh that each of us must serve his dream, and so, must fail in the dream's service." Even into her 90s, Cunningham continued to love and limn the human body, creating uncommonly frank, deeply humane works of genius. --Peggy Moorman

Customer Reviews:

"You might say I invented the nude.".......2005-07-23

A bold statement for her to make, even when limited to the photographic nude. Earlier photos of people without clothes generally served scientific purposes (like Muybridge's), or salacious ones. The artistic, even abstract photographic nude may in fact be Cunningham's invention.

This samples Cunningham's career, from 1906 to 1976, from age 23 to the year of her death. That artistic longevity, if nothing else, is worthy of note. But the real strngth of the collection is in the photos themselves.

The abstract photos, like 'Helen' (plate 42) and 'Roi' (plate 34) are utterly literal and utterly baffling. Each is a simple picture, but shows just how complex the interaction of human figure and viewpoint can be. Many, like plates 44 and 51, are simple celebrations of form. One thing struck me, again and again. Modern photographers often present a figure that's made up and airbrushed to polyethylene perfection - something strangely inhuman. Cunningham captures the human animal more precisely, in the delicate down of feminine skin (plate 43), the scars that record events in a person's life (plates 49 and maybe 72), goosebumps (plate 27), even stretch marks on a woman richly pregnant (plate 98). These details add depth to Cunningham's work, offering something new at every level of detail in her pictures.

I highly recommend this collection, especially as it documents one of the visions that founded modern photographic style.

//wiredweird

Before Her Time.......2004-01-27

Imogen Cunningham brings to light an eye for the simplest beauty. The photographs contained within this book are diverse with studies in children, families, the male nude, the female nude, textures in nature and some in more familiar home environs. I am particularly fond of her portraits in the book as well as her fleshier pieces. She has absolutely beautiful composition and creates incredible foils for the human skin to be set off by. I love to use the book's photographs for reference when I am painting. It is an essential in my collection.

Fine Art Photography Finely Presented.......2002-07-18

The beauty of the works of Imogen Cunningham to this day remain staggering. Knowing that the photographs are early contributions to the genre of nude photography is even more amazing. Yes, compared to some of today's art photographers the poses may appear a bit static and stagey, but the quality of composition, of light and shadow, of clarity of vision is still hard to match. This is an historically important volume and one of great beauty. The accompanying essay is brief but sensitive and informative.

Imogen at her finest.......2001-10-18

It is astonishing to think that the images Imogen made came from such an early age in photography. Starting in 1906, Imogen made pictures of the human body that stand out as the finest today. These images have been lusciously reproduced in this book that plots the history and progress of Imogen through her career. What a pioneering career it must have been. The subjects of her lens were almost unheard of in those days where the showing of an ankle was scandalous. She makes no technical concessions whatever; each exposure is exactly in needle-sharp focus and rendered in smooth gradual tones of the highest quality process. She must have had strict discipline to technical detail to have consistently produced this quality of images, there is no other way. I would have loved to have known her. The things she could tell a fellow photographer must have been volumes. You cannot be disappointed by this book.

Imogen Cunningham's Pioneering Body Photography.......2001-04-28

This book deserves more than five stars for the remarkable quality of the images, the virtuousity across styles, and the pioneering inventiveness of its compositions.

On the Body contains much male, female, and child nudity of the sort that would mean that these images would be beyond what a motion picture could portray and still have an R rating. The images are done in a natural style that will remind many of the Jock Sturges work with children and young women.

Imogen Cunningham is quoted in this volume as asserting, "You might say I invented the nude." Before you dismiss this statement, you should realize that while she was an undergraduate at the University of Washington Ms. Cunningham did a self-portrait of herself nude in a meadow. The year was 1906. The composition and quality of the photograph reflect a sophisticated understanding of the body as an abstract shape. Ms. Cunningham is also famous (infamous in her day with some people) for her nudes of her husband, Roi Patridge, outdoors. She also brought a high level of taste to her subject at a time when many men were posing women in the nude more for the prurient interest than for the artistic values. Although modern nude photography has moved beyond her work in its inventiveness, the classical elements she portrays here are the sound foundation on which much of the best modern work is based.

Anyone who is a fan of 20th century photography should own this book. All Imogen Cunningham fans will find this book becoming the core of their collection of her images.

Although I personally prefer Ruth Bernhard's work, the best of Ms. Cunningham's work is just as winning. Ms. Cunningham works on a broader body of subjects, which makes this book far more interesting than most photography books. You will find studio work, nudes in landscapes, bits and pieces of individuals including many wonderful hand images, pregnant women nude, children playing naturally nude, and prominent people expressing their personalities in interesting ways. The book is a fine cross-section of all the styles that Ms. Cunningham used.

The book contained so many images that I liked that it is beyond what you would want to read for me to list them all. Let me mention a few though. A very high percentage of the works involving her husband nude outdoors are remarkably beautiful and inspiring. A series of outdoor nudes of Helene Mayer in Canyon de Chelly during 1939 are as beautiful a set of photographic images as I have seen. The hand photographs are quite remarkable, and will cause you to want to examine peoples' hands for the rest of your life. I especially liked her efforts to create a spiritual or transcendental style in the inventive works involving "Dream Walking" in 1968 and Morris Graves in 1973. These images seemed to foreshadow the type of work in Light Warriors.

To me, the most haunting works were a series of abstract partial nudes of women's torsos (usually more than one in an image) that formed a series of triangles. This perspective was transforming for me. I seldom think of the human body in terms of triangles. The triangles are references to the negative space outlined by the nudes.

After you view this wonderful volume, I suggest that you think about how our concepts of the human body limit photography, and how how concepts of photography limit our ability to appreciate the human body. Why is it that no one does studies of nostrils? Or elbows? Are they less worthy than hands?

Open yourself to the full potential of the physical world around you, and expand your ability to perceive the reality and potential of that world for you to partipate in.

Average customer rating:

Flawless photos, great style

Stunning figure photo

Gorgeous!

Disappointed

Description

Ruth Bernhard: The Eternal Body: A Collection of Fifty Nudes
Margaretta Mitchell
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Female Nudes

Heavenly Beauties

The World's Top Photographers: Nudes: And the Stories Behind Their Greatest Images (The World's Top Photographers)

The Body: Photographs of the Human Form

Xpose Xpose

ASIN: 0811808017

Book Description

For over half a century, acclaimed photographer Ruth Bernhard has worked to "simplify, isolate, and give emphasis to form with greatest clarity" in her radiant photographs of the female nude. Now, with Chronicle Books' timely reissue of her best-selling volume, The Eternal Body, Bernhard's most evocative images are once again available in a superb collection, complete with an insightfill text, that pays tribute to a living legend. Hauntingly sensual yet classically reserved, the book's ethereal duotone photographs appear to be illuminated from within so that even the simplest lines of the human form -- a draped torso, a curved neck, an angled limb -- take on a complexity not often seen in work of this kind. A master artist whose technical prowess places her among the ranks of the greatest photographers of our time, Ruth Bernhard has created a masterpiece of expression and sensitivity in The Eternal Body.

Customer Reviews:

Flawless photos, great style.......2007-09-10

Bernhard simiply reminds us of the beauty of the female body. It is a study of perfect lighting and posing.

Stunning figure photo.......2007-06-07

Ansel Adams declared Berhard "the greatest photographer of the nude." Perhaps she is, but I haven't wholly understood why - not because the work is obscure (it's not at all), but because it's deep.

This book contains plenty of evidence. These fifty B&W pictures span forty years of her career, in chronological order. In the 1930s, "In the Circle" and "Embryo" use simple props to contrast the harsh geometries of human products with the softness of the human herself. Other photos from that era use running water or draping to highlight the figure. By the 1950s, though, Berhard had simplified down to just the figure itself, as in "Dancer's Hips," making her work plainer, but bolder and more monumental. Still later, Berhard added back in screens to soften focus and create a new play of shadow. Although interesting, I'm still more moved by the compositions in terms of figure alone, including "Crossover," "Two Forms," and "Sand Dune."

Throughout, Bernhard examines the female models with a female eye, celebrating the feminine in the figure for what it is. "Early Nude," "Harvest," and "Hourglass," among others, emphasize curves that embody strength - curves that other photographers, especially male, could have made awkward. It's a wonderful collection, one that I know I'll keep coming back to. I have much to learn from it.

-- wiredweird

Gorgeous!.......2007-05-12

I recently purchased this book and why did I wait this long? All I can say is breathtaking. Being a photographer who sometimes does nudes for personal project, it is a challenging task to compose and light the human body avoiding from making it "pornlike" or overtly sexual. Each style has its own place in the marketplace; however, the former requires much more skills than just a good looking model.

Disappointed.......2006-08-25

Well, it's four stars worth of disappointed...and I realize it's something of a heresy to be less than thrilled by the work of this pioneer artist in the field of the photographic nude. This softbound book is a touch under a foot square, and the 50 photographs are of nearly that size. They are all black-and-white, though there is a great range of experimental treatment that belies the suggestion of sameness. Some superimpose female figures and subjects from nature ("Harvest," e.g., is the midriff of a very pregnant woman superimposed with a field of grain); some are highly abstract, utilizing very high-intensity light with shadow contrasts, delivering a very impressionistic human torso; and others utilize transparent material and the like to create unique effects.

Why didn't I like it better? I don't like impressionistic, highly stylized nudes, but realistic skin tones and recognizable features. Beauty counts more for me than technical fireworks. You may feel otherwise, especially if you are a professional photographer.

Description.......2006-01-04

"Half a century of Bernhard's reserved, sensual, and ethereal female nudes collected in 50 beautifully produced duo tones. An insightful text enhances our understanding of a pre-eminent American photographer. 'Outstanding...the greatest photographer of the nude'--Ansel Adams"--© zebraz

Average customer rating:

Nice pics but weak analysis
A superior draughtsman
A college Fine Arts Major's dream come true!!

Language of the Body
John Elderfield
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Classical Drawing Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice

ASIN: 0810935856

Customer Reviews:

Nice pics but weak analysis.......2007-07-21

The heros of this book are the images and not the writing. While I'm thankfull to the author for presenting these rare drawings, I dislike his highly opinionated, rambling pontifications so typical of ignorant, ivy league writers. It confuses and distracts us from a more solid, critical analysis of Prud'hon's work. Its mostly a smokescreen for having something more intelligent and practical to say. And Ederfield's Bio revealing his Modern bent, deems him a poor candidate to be writing about classical art, but alas I suppose we have few other choices.
Since he's virtually clueless about the formal process, he instead hacks out an ambiguous search for a primarily emotional meaning - almost an entire page of text is wasted on meaningless speculations about supposed, effeminate male poses, perhaps motivated by some gay agenda. This again distracts us from studying highly complex issues. This could have otherwise been replaced by ie. close up's of the drawings, so prized by a painter like myself. It wouldn't be so bad if authors like Elderfield simply limited their thoughts to the emotional responce they personally recieve, stating clearly that it is indeed their own interpretation, but not only do they present these ideas as if they are factual, but they have the naive arrogance to refer to the process of drawing in the same subjective manner. I can only believe it is a pethetic attempt to elevate themselves from the category of documentary writer to the higher level of artist, as if to say, "I am a genius writer and only through my eyes and words are you, the lesser reader, able to experience a deeper understanding of the work". God forbid if we were simply given the few facts and allowed to make our own analysis.
The author is entirely incorrect on pg. 89 stating ie., "He (Prud'hon)only sees the surface...etc." This whole passage is a superficial, modern assumption, due in part, to a very photo-sited art community. The basis of cast drawing has, for example, little do with lighting and the whole Bargue/site-size baloney, rather it deals with complex, dimensional forms conveyed through Greek sculpture. Prud'hon, on the contrary, was a master of the lost art of "form drawing" so essential to classical art prior to the mid 19th C. His 3-D ability with respect to underlying structure and anatomy is extremely sophisticated and decieving to the untrained eye. Thank you for letting me ruffle some wanna-be-elitist feathers, and speak with substance rather than just saying this is a pretty book.

A superior draughtsman.......2006-02-06

I've owned at least one copy of this book for many years (1997). It's by far one of my most cherished art books and unmatched by any other book of drawings I've seen. If you appreciate fine drawings and value truly superior draughtsmanship you'll want to add this to your collection.

In my opinion, you owe it you yourself to purchase (yes, it's extremely expensive today, but keep watching) or find a copy in the library. Prud'hon was a late-18th century French academic that sadly wasn't fully appreciated in his day. He did enjoy success in his later career but some of his contemporaries, including David and Gericault, enjoyed more visible success in the same period.

The highlights of this book are the 57 color plates of Prud'hon's academic figure drawings, or "acadamies" as they are known. These drawings are exemplary models today, and unlike the scribbled messes many 20th century "artists" produce (and deemed acceptable by today's art schools), these drawings are dignified and stunningly beautiful.

Unfortunately, Prud'hon's drawing techniques have been lost and there is no definitive work describing how they were produced. Many of these drawings have unfinished sections and you can see not only the basic structure, but the construction process as well. We also can guess at what he did with the materials that were available at the time, but it would be nice to see the process documented.

Finally I believe this book should be reprinted, but until that time (if ever), try to at least see a copy if you can. For more information on Prud'hon I would also highly recommend the book Pierre-Paul Prud'hon by Sylvain Laveissiere; it's another beautiful - and still available - book illustrating Prud'hon's works, including paintings and drawings.

A college Fine Arts Major's dream come true!!.......1998-11-11

This book covers the structural anatomy with pin-point accuracy. Though this isn't really an anatomy book by title, by examining Prud'hon's structural techniques, one can easily see all of college's artistic anatomy classes in one of his graphics.

Average customer rating:

Black erotica at it's best
Nice complement
Simply Art
Very Well Done
Visual eroticism, done with both style and class.

Body and Soul: Black Erotica
Rundu Staggers
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0517703548
Release Date: 1996-11-12

Book Description

This striking, oversize coffee table book features 66 erotic yet romantic photographs that express the sensual beauty of African American men and women in portraits, as individuals and couples, and in and out of the studio. Reflecting and enhancing the mood of the photographs are a dozen classic black love poems. Body and Soul will appeal to a broad spectrum of men and women as a radiant visual and verbal testament ot the joys of sexuality. 66 duotones.

Customer Reviews:

Black erotica at it's best.......2006-02-08

This book is great. It contradicts all the stereotypes about African-Americans being ugly and filthy. This book has beautiful pictures of African American people of all ages. Everyone looks like the royalty that we once were, picture perfect. This is a must have...especially if you like artistic nudity. I highly recommend it!

Nice complement.......2003-04-08

I was looking for a fresh but classy addition to my coffee table collection that now consists of ONLY Marc Baptiste's 'Beautiful'. Therefore, I was very discriminating about the runner-up. I was looking for another book that contained erotica, but did not want to push the envelope into an area of tackiness. However, Rundu's studio photography, mixed with a tasteful collection of spontaneous location pictures, offer a nice complement to my 'green' collection of eclectic coffee table books.

Simply Art.......2003-04-08

The perfect compliment to Marc Baptiste's "Beautiful". Place these 2 books alone on your coffee table and you are sure to have great 'party talk'.

Very Well Done.......2000-05-24

Black Love is Long overdue too Be Viewed with Class&Style.this Book Hits Home.Very Solid Pictures&Poems that set the tone really well.I wish The FIlm Business would Show this more often&TV as well.Very essential.

Visual eroticism, done with both style and class........1999-04-03

The African-American sexualtiy is shown in not only an erotic fashion, but with a romantic class. "Body and Soul" is refreshing view of sexual mood which as of lately has been lost, and redefined. The poems bring to life the sexual impulse of the photographs. A sensuous delight for both the body, and soul.

Average customer rating:

Another wonderful collection of photographs
From the Publisher & About the Author
ENOUGH HEAT TO LAST A YEAR AND BEYOND

Body Heat

Manufacturer: Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Erotic Photography | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 3861878607

Customer Reviews:

Another wonderful collection of photographs.......2007-07-18

No disappointments here - somewhat posey at times but the composition and beauty still thrills. Get it if you are a fan or a collector.

From the Publisher & About the Author.......2005-08-26

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"A beautifully printed full color calendar with loads of Kristen Bjorn models."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"Kristen Bjorn was born in London, England on 12 October 1957. He grew up in Washington DC and at the age of eighteen he left the USA, and lived in numerous different countries over the following seventeen years. Kristen started his career as a Falcon [Studios] model in 1981, and within two years later he became one of the foremost photographers of the male nude for several international publications. In 1989, Kristen released his first gay erotic video CARNIVAL IN RIO, which was filmed at his home base in Brazil. Over the past 10 years, Kristen has toured the globe, and has created some of the world's best gay erotic video in such diverse locations as Brazil, The Dominican Republic, USA, French Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Hungary, Cuba, and Costa Rica. [...] ISBN 3-86187-676-0, © 2004 Bruno Gmünder Verlag (Editor & Publisher); photographs © Kristen Bjorn (Photographer), U.S.A., 2000

ENOUGH HEAT TO LAST A YEAR AND BEYOND.......2002-11-23

Those who know Kristen Bjorn will know why his men are hot...and now these models in this hot 2003 calendar will generate enough heat to keep you going all year...beautifully photographed and top notch nude and muscular men from Bjorn's world will make you delighfully feverish!

Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

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Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Linda Nochlin
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674021169

Book Description

To the eye of some viewers, Renoir's Great Bathers are the very picture of female sensuality and beauty. To others, they embody a whole tradition of masculine mastery and feminine display. Yet others find in the bathers a feminine fantasy of bodily liberation. The points of view are many, various, occasionally startling--and through them, Linda Nochlin explores the contradictions and dissonances that mark experience as well as art. Her book--about art, the body, beauty, and ways of viewing--confronts the issues posed in representations particularly of the female body in the art of impressionists, modern masters, and contemporary realists and post-modernists.

Nochlin begins by focusing on the painterly preoccupation with bathing, whether at the beach, in lakes and rivers, in public swimming pools, or in bathtubs. In discussions of Renoir, Manet, Cezanne, Bonnard, and Picasso, of late-twentieth-century and contemporary artists such as Philip Pearlstein, Alice Neel, and Jenny Saville, of grotesque imagery, the concept of beauty, and the body in realism, she develops an interpretive collage incorporating the readings of differing, strong-willed, female viewpoints. Among these is, of course, Nochlin's own, a vantage point subtly charted here through a longtime engagement with art, art history, and artists.

In many ways a personal book, Bathers, Bodies, Beauty brings to bear a lifetime of looking at, teaching, talking about, wrestling with, loving, and hating art to reveal and complicate the lived and felt--the visceral--experience of art.

Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art Works From The Thomas Koefer Collection

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Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art Works From The Thomas Koefer Collection
Thomas Koerfer
Manufacturer: Merrell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 185894256X

Book Description

Explores the naked body in contemporary art and photography. Features a powerful selection of works by many of the most highly acclaimed artists of our time, including Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Araki. Forceful and often erotic images, many of which have never previously been published, are accompanied by insightful essays that elucidate the complex and ongoing relationship between the body, the artist and the voyeur.

Male Bodies: A Photographic History of the Nude

Average customer rating:

No beauty in this book!
A Photographic History of the Male Nude of Great Dignity
Almost 150 color photos

Male Bodies: A Photographic History of the Nude
Emmanuel Cooper
Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

ASIN: B000KCI8S4

Book Description

From paradigms of physical perfection to gay icons, this illustrated survey of male nude photography presents in one stunning volume various portrayals of masculinity as seen through the eyes of the world's most renowned photographers.

For a century and a half, photographers have been documenting the male form in order to serve a variety of purposes, from motion and anatomical studies to models for subsequent paintings to purely aesthetic and erotic ends. The entire continuum of male nude photography is the subject of this new volume in the Icons of Photography series. Fifty extraordinary images by such masters as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, Diane Arbus, Joel-Peter Witkin, Duane Michals, Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol and Grace Lau are presented in vibrant two-page spreads with illuminating commentary by an expert in photography. Together these pictures trace an arc through the development of photographic history, technique, and style, while also following the cultural patterns that helped define our ideas of male beauty.

Customer Reviews:

No beauty in this book!.......2006-10-25

If you want to study photography and the history of the nude male in photography, then you should buy this book! In that regard it is a great book. However, I bought the book because I wanted to look at beautiful naked males.

If you also want to look at beautiful nude males, then this book has little to offer. Few models in the book are what I would call beautiful and few models are young.

It really depends on what you are looking for.

A Photographic History of the Male Nude of Great Dignity.......2005-03-28

Emmanuel Cooper has performed a significant service to photographers, artists, sociologists, and historians in creating this excellent folio of the history of photographing the male nude, from the mid 19th Century to the present. Not only does this fine book contain many superlative photographs of historical and esthetic significance, it also provides insights into the men and women who created or documented these images.

Coupled with each of well over a hundred photographs are essays or commentaries about each photographer. The artists include Imogen Cunningham, Duane Michaels, Nan Golden, Edward Weston, Diane Arbus, Annie Liebowitz among many more and the information about the influence and photographic style of each contributor is enlightening. Whether the photographers were using the male figure as a construct of sculptural beauty or as audience-specific titillation is more of casual interest than documentary importance.

What does come through clearly on repeated perusing of this volume is the altered view of the male physique from the beginning of photography to the present. Without preaching to the balcony Emmanuel Cooper merely lets the pictures and atmospheres speak for themselves. This is a very important and very beautiful collection of images, and more importantly these images are given respect and credence as the art form they truly are. Recommended. Grady Harp, March 05

Almost 150 color photos .......2004-09-16

Male Bodies is Emmanuel Cooper's photographic history of the male nude and holds almost 150 color photos and a documentation of over a century of male nude works by such masters as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Andy Warhol and more. Much more than just a coffee table collection of images, each full-page set of nudes is accompanied by a biographical sketch of the artist involved, and the history and relevance of his/her work to the evolution of modern male nude representation. The chronological arrangement of Male Bodies makes for an outstanding selection.

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