strued as pornography (or at best, eroticism) and
subject to social and legal sanction.
For years, photographers sought to gain respect-
ability for their nascent art form by having their pro-
duct imitate classical art forms, especially painting.
This effort was clearly manifest in nude photography
produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. Nudes are portrayed reclining on beds or
sofas, gazing dreamily off into the middle distance,
surrounded with luxurious fabrics and unlikely props.
This approach gradually gave way to the work of
the Photo-Secessionists, led by Alfred Stieglitz,
who wanted photography to be accepted in its
own right as an art form, and sought to achieve
this goal by using the techniques that were unique
to photography—such as special printing techni-
ques, retouching of negatives, and the use of soft
focus and filters, in an attempt to duplicate the
look of the traditional fine arts mediums of paint-
ing and prints. But it was Stieglitz himself who
realized that this approach was limiting, and he
eventually sought to develop a uniquely photo-
graphic style, especially as it involved the nude.
Nude photography as we know it today has its
origins with Stieglitz’s later work, especially the
studies of his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as in
the works of Edward Weston, known for their
combination of artistic sensibility, passion, and a
sense of the power of the camera as a recorder of
reality. Weston’s nude studies from the 1920s and
1930s of his various mistresses and wives, including
Tina Modotti, set the standard for fine arts black-
and-white nude photography; his famous studies of
vegetables and shells also defined the artistic nude
in demonstrating how black-and-white photogra-
phy can capture the surface of things to create a
sensuous, provocative image.
Others who helped bring nude photography into
the modern era include European photographers of
the 1920s and 1930s, including Maurice Tabard,
Erwin Blumenfeld, and Brassaı ̈, influenced by Sur-
realism and the theories of the subconscious pro-
mulgated by Sigmund Freud. Man Ray used the
nude in his photograms to create sensuous and new
representations of the female body; Andre ́Kerte ́sz
and Andre ́ Steiner experimented with distortion
techniques to create startling images of human
flesh. In the United States, two pioneering women
photographers made modernist nude studies. Imo-
gen Cunningham photographed both the male and
female nude. Ruth Bernhard highlighted the curves
of the female body by contrasting it with the hard
edges of geometric figures. Paul Outerbridge Jr.
was an innovator in the use of color photography,
creating a series of nudes as early as the 1930s.
The choice of subject has always been an issue
for those concerned with photography, and
nowhere is this more true than when the subject
involves nudes. One important issue involves gen-
der. The vast majority of work featuring the nude
focuses on female subjects. Set aside the last two
decades of the twentieth century, and the female
figure probably occupies 95% or more of all nude
studies published. Many have raised the legitimate
question of why this should be so.
One answer involves simple demographics. Tra-
ditionally, photography has been both a business
and a hobby carried out by men (although this has
been changing in recent decades). A heterosexual
man interested in photographing nudes will prob-
ably be drawn to the female form, given the inher-
ent beauty that most men find in the female body,
as well as the sexual stimulation which female
nudes usually provide. Sexually, men tend to be
much more responsive to visual stimuli than
women, which probably explains why ‘‘skin maga-
zines’’ appealing to men proliferate while those
aimed at women are rare.
However, another explanation has been offered
by some feminist critics, who argue that the pre-
dominance of nude female images represent men’s
continuing power over women. Thus, as one
‘‘takes’’ a photograph, one simultaneously ‘‘pos-
sesses’’ the subject of the photo. In this view, a
man photographing a nude woman is both objecti-
fying and possessing her—and, if the photo is later
sold, exploiting her as well.
The relative paucity of male nudes until recently
may also be explained in part by longstanding Wes-
tern homophobia. Homosexuality was (and in some
ways, continues to be) a stigma, and a man who
sought out nude male models ran the risk of being
perceived as homosexual. If the male nudes were
published, the risk increased geometrically. Like-
wise, a man viewing male nudes, even if his interest
was purely aesthetic, faced the suspicion that he
found the images sexually attractive, with all the
attendant cultural condemnation that involved.
Another issue of subject choice involves chil-
dren. It is well recognized that children have some-
times been victims of sexual exploitation, some of
which has taken the form of photographs. Child
pornography (also called ‘‘kiddie porn’’), which
refers to pictorial materials (whether still or in
motion) of sexual acts involving children is rightly
condemned by many societies and considered a
serious criminal offense. But beginning in the
1970s, some countries extended the definition of
child pornography to include photographic depic-
tions that did not involve acts commonly consid-NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY