Even in the Western world, which seems completely accustomed to a widespread appearance of risque images, an erotic painting from five hundred years ago can still manage to create a sensation. This book, the fifteenth title in the popular Guide to Imagery series, is a delightful romp through the portrayal of love and sexuality in art--age-old subjects depicted in all cultures. The volume surveys Western artworks illustrating more or less explicitly delicate or amorous subjects. The gamut of possibilities is vast, ranging from chaste tenderness to overwhelming frenzies of the senses, from Classical allusion to sexual fantasy.
A series of general themes is presented, with a detailed reading of the significance and symbolic content of the individual works illustrating each theme. In the paintings of the past, the reader will encounter gestures, objects, places, and situations that seem familiar and that offer the traditional setting of "love scenes" from every epoch. The volume closes with a chapter highlighting some of the most famous couples of all time."

Affect is an essentially indefinable, largely non-conscious quality that correlates to the experience of diverse emotional and physiological states. This exciting book examines the idea of affect in art. Drawing from an international cadre of contemporary artists working in a variety of media, this book addresses the question of how bodies are affected by intimate relationships with and through objects. The book investigates the kinds of intimate relationships we form with art; explores how art acts as a vehicle for affective engagement or transactions of desire; what role gender plays in affect; and how we experience this force in works of art.

The first Yale French Studies issue on photography, examining French photography's place in art, identity, and society through a lens of diversity and interdisciplinary investigation In its first issue on photography, this volume of Yale French Studies presents multiple avenues of interdisciplinary investigation designed to intersect and open up new areas of inquiry in the twenty-first century. These intersections push beyond traditional geographic and gender boundaries, exploring women's photography, new cultural contexts, trans orientalism, and minority and marginalized bodies. As they do so, they ask us to reconsider the way that we conceive of photography's place in the past and in our lives today.

Text in English & German. As a photographer, the challenge is in capturing the very moment that a fluid substance interacts with the body in a way that will take the viewer on a sensual adventure, inviting not only to their visual sense but also invoking sensations of touch, taste, and imagination. When successful, the result is a unique moment frozen in time, never to be repeated. The result is photographic imagery that is sensual, provocative and erotic. Living close to Washington DC, Jim spent many years photographing landscapes, monuments, masonry and still lifes, and his stunning images have adorned the offices of doctors, lawyers and dentists. It was not until his daughter requested Jim capture a few maternity images for her that he turned his sights to portrait photography. With this new found passion, Jim completely immersed himself in the study of lighting, posing, and the business of photography, and soon found himself perfecting what was quickly becoming his specialised genre, the fine art nude. Always striving to aim higher, to always improve, and, yes, to push the envelope even further. When asked to pick his best image, Jim says "the best is yet to come".

The subjects of her recent art are a logical continuation of the larger narrative of Benjamin's body of work: She works to excavate the female human experience as she knows it. Benjamin muses on intimacy, sexuality, self-perception, body dysmorphia, and trauma through her avatars. Her work is diaristic, approaching her subjects through the lens of her own personal experience; each piece can easily feel like a self-portrait. Her women are simultaneously self-assured and crumbled, standing defiantly on their own two hairy legs, yet seeking the shoulder of an empathetic viewer to cry on. Benjamin uses her art to sort through her own trauma and self-analysis, and seeks to give faces, bodies, and narratives to the different facets of her own womanhood.

This collection of over 250 contemporary retro-style cheesecake, glamour, and hot rod pinup photographs by Northern California artist Marilee Caruso takes women from all backgrounds and transforms them into the classy yet stimulating bombshells of our parents' and grandparents' day. Inspired by icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, or Sophia Loren, each portrait provides a nostalgic glance into the mood, style, and sex appeal of the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and '60s era pin-up girl. From black and white Hollywood starlets to greasy hot rod honeys, this bevy of gorgeous gals has been revamped with vintage hair and makeup, wardrobe, and posing. Shot with high-quality digital technology of the 21st century, each image is reminiscent of the drawings of Gil Elvgrin and Alberto Vargas.

A glimpse through the keyhole of history: From the earliest nude daguerrotypes to experimental nude photography The history of nude photography is the history of people s fascination with the topic. Indeed, the photographic depiction of the human body is the only subject that has enthralled photographers, theoreticians and consumers over such a long period more than 150 years. No other motif is as prevalent as this one during all the phases of development comprising the history of photography, no other is present, whatever the technique, and is a subject of discussion within the context of nearly all aesthetic movements. Nor has any other pictorial topic produced such a variety of specialities as the nude: from the ethnological interpretation of the body to the glamour shot, from nudist photography to the pin-up of today. No other photographic field of application has inspired as much desire as it has awakened official wrath. 1000 Nudes offers a cross-section of the history of nude photography, ranging from the earliest nude daguerrotypes and ethnographic nude photographs to experimental nude photography. The period of time spanned by this work is from 1839 to roughly 1939, from the medium s infancy to the end of the classic modernist period. Content-wise, the book pays tribute to the full range of pictorial approaches, from the manually elaborated artistic nudes of the turn of the century, enveloped in layers of theory, to the obscene postcard motifs which had not the slightest artistic pretension and were intended to exert a maximum effect on the buyer s wallet. All the pictures shown are taken from the late Uwe Scheid s collection, which was one of the world s largest and most important collections of erotic photography."

Fehl Cannon's work is about permission to look, admire & desire. His guys share his obsession with their bodies. Props are used as erotic symbols serving as totems of masculinity, emblems of private and communal fantasies. Fehl Cannon captures male energy, freezing it for our view in a split-second flash.