Ritts (1952–2002) continued the search for beauty and sensuality in
the male body.
femiNist Nudes
With the birth of magazines such as Playboy in 1953 and Penthouse
in 1965, erotic female nudity entered everyday life and became
a fashionable theme within certain sectors of the population in
Western Europe and the us. This type of nude imagery was
entirely male-orientated in that it was both produced by, and
targeted at, men.
The feminist movement that was born in the 1960s and grew
in power and influence in the 1970s rejected this tradition of
male exploitation, and since then numerous female artists have
used photography and video to reclaim their sexual identity
independently of the male gaze. Between 1975 and 1981, the
American artist Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) made a series
of self-portraits expressing her sexuality, her desires, and her
anxieties. Her photographs were often an inner dialogue with the
mirror, playing with the ideas of narcissism, her own beauty, and
the fact that beauty will eventually fade. The nude in Woodman’s
work is more than provocative; it serves as the image of her
soul, an autobiographical emotional diary which ended when she
committed suicide at the age of 23. The feminist determination
to assert ownership of images of the female body is the rationale
for such introspective self-portraits, and Toto Frima (1953–) in the
Netherlands has also produced fine examples of this kind of work.rediscoveriNg eroticism
Meanwhile, photographers such as Ralph Gibson (1939–) and
David Hamilton ( 1 933–) in the uK and Lucien Clergue (1934–) in
France searched for a poetic eroticism in the female body. Clergue
usually photographed his models next to natural elements such as Robert Mapplethorpe
Thomas (1986). Mapplethorpe’s
photographs ranged from
sexually explicit to sublimely
beautiful. He gained recognition
during the 1970s with elegantly
composed, sometimes
shocking, male nudes.REDIsCOVERING EROTICIsM 25