Born like Venus on the half shell from the centuries-long tradition of the nude in painting, the nude first appeared as a subject matter in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as an ever-evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day. This volume surveys the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models for aesthetic or scientific purposes to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form. The seventy-eight works, selected from the extensive collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum and further contextualized here in the essay Masterworks of the Nude, span the entire arc of the history of photography in a manner that is both fresh and illuminating. Among the sixty-four photographers included are nineteenth-century masters Julia Margaret Cameron, Edgar Degas, and Thomas Eakins; early-twentieth-century artists Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston; mid-twentieth-century innovators Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, and Minor White; late-twentieth-century image makers Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts; and contemporary artists Chuck Close, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, and Mona Kuhn.

Adorable, amazing, and often quite dangerous - these are the hallmarks of a Dixon girl! UK painter extraordinaire Matt Dixon has assembled a new gallery of gloriously strong and bad-ass beauties, this time featuring an introduction by famed actress and fantasy film icon Caroline Munro! Mutual admiration never looked this good!

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.

Showcasing a diverse variety of women, these portraits demonstrate the work of famed nude photographer Thomas Karsten. The collection captures a variety of unique subjects from different parts of the world, depicting the individual beauty of each culture and going beyond endeavored poses to communicate intense emotion and eroticism. Combined with the author's poetic reflections, this painstakingly produced volume is both an optical and sensual pleasure. This bilingual edition includes English and German.

Featured cover artist for such European comix as "Eros", "Kiss", and "Penthouse", Carlos Diez puts a massive amount of research into his creations. Those sketches are intricate blueprints that make for a fascinating study of technique and composition. And yes, beautiful semi-naked girls!

Nick Baer continues his portfolio collection of fine art male nude models, with his picks for 2006. Two dozen men, athletes, artists, from various parts of the world: Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, South American, Mid-Eastern. Full frontal male nudity, color, 40 pages. On some websites, Dylan Jordan is known as Jeremy Steele and/or Jordan Banks.

His first volume of voluptuous vixens snugly bound and trussed up created more than a few raised eyebrows (and trips to the local rope store!) Vincent Stephens has been hard at work creating an all-new collection of wickedly wild and winsome ladies, cuffed, shackled, and generally all tied up wearing nothing but a knowing smile! This second volume - subtitled "Tighter and Harder" gives bondage art fans a freshly built stage on which to enjoy all new fantasies! And you thought all that nylon cord was just for tying down canvas covers in the winter - silly boy! You can do a HELL of a lot more interesting things, and Mr. Stephens shows you the way!

Yo ho, indeed! Here's a magnificent gallery of exquisite lady pirate portraits by one of the great erotic pin-up artists working today -- Stefano Mazzotti. His photo-realism blends seamlessly with the fantasy of beautiful brigands (brigandettes?) fully prepared to attack your mast and swarm your deck in search of treasure, pleasure, and yes -- BOOTY! From his works in the "Velvet Love" series, as well as "Tatz: Sin on Skin", Mazzotti is turning into one of the hottest, most requested talents in the SQP mega-pool of illustrators! We're delighted to present this latest collection of brand new works. Eye-patch and peg-leg not required to thoroughly enjoy this book, although you will let out with the occasional "ARRRRRRR"!

The evil villainess Madame Santina has created an unstoppable army of megasexual zombies, and it's up to Magenta and her faithful sidekick Lucrezia to save the day! Or have one hell of a wild night -- whichever seems the most fun! Retro fun and naughtiness from the minds of Celestino Pes and Nik Guerra.

Such a charming atmosphere. Such a rich history. So many sights to see. And what a magnificent collection of ropes, chains, handcuffs, and intricate winch and pulley systems! Proprietor/artist Rich Larson takes every pain to make his Bed & Bondage the finest in the land, and in this second collection of delightful damsels in discipline, truly there are "No Reservations Required!" Like the first visit to this naughty nirvana, master of the house Larson combines his wicked imagination to his prodigious illustrative talents, and let the 5-star reviews pour forth! With his not-so-silent partner Steve Fastner, they team up for color cover paintings that will leave any road weary traveler breathless with anticipation! It's a simple formula of girls + ropes + nasty thoughts that has Rich Larson's fans returning season after season for more fun and froth at this most deviate of roadside attractions! Come for the full-body suspension gear, stay for the view!

The trip to Hell is paved with so many delightful distractions! Namely - the smokey-eyed seductresses that lead the way to eternal damnation. Ahh...being bad was never this much fun! Our second descent to the lower circles feature the illustrative talents of Perez, DeSimone, Marachi, Sosa, Pelaez, Arantza, and other lost souls. Sinful cover painting by Arantza.

In 2007 TASCHEN released The New Erotic Photography, followed in 2012 by The New Erotic Photography 2. Each book featured hundreds of fresh and provocative images from the world's most intriguing erotic talents. Now the best of both books is available in The New Erotic Photography, featuring 62 photographers from 10 countries, exploring the global variations of erotic photography, as well as the evolution of photographic media over the last decade. We see film give way to digital, while those who persist with film are as likely to use Polaroids and primitive cameras like the Lomo and Holga as traditional SLRs. The featured photographers include new names Gregory Bojorquez, Jo Schwab, Tomohide Ikeya, Frederic Fontenoy, Andrew Pashis, and Jan Hronsky, as well as established artists Guido Argentini, Bruno Bisang, Eric Kroll, and the late Bob Carlos Clarke. Several outstanding women are also featured in this edition, including erotic film star Kimberly Kane, digital pioneer Natacha Merritt, heavy metal skateboarder Magdalena Wosinska, self-portraitist Jody Frost, and cover artist April-lea Hutchinson. It all adds up to an awful lot of nudes for a tantalizingly low price. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

Celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe challenged the limits of censorship and conformity, com- bining technical and formal mastery with unexpected, often provocative content that secured his place in history. Mapplethorpe's artistic vision helped shape the social and cultural fabric of the 1970s and 80s and, following his death in 1989 from AIDS, informed the political landscape of the 1990s. His photographic works continue to resonate with audiences all over the world. Throughout his career, Mapplethorpe preserved studio files and art from every period and vein of his production, including student work, jewelry, sculptures, and commercial assignments. The resulting archive is fascinating and astonishing. With over four hundred illustrations, this volume surveys a virtually unknown resource that sheds new light on the artist's motivations, connections, business acumen, and tal- ent as a curator and collector.

With a body built for sex, and a mind for solving crime (through the use of sex, of course), Magenta is a take-charge kind of woman! She needs no mutant ability or radioactive bug-bite to access her amazing abilities - a tight dress and some silky underwear will do! Any man (or mildly bi-curious woman) is putty in her hands, as Magenta uses her amazing sexuality to get to the bottom...of the case! Starting her own detective agency with her friend Lucrezia (who also puts the "bust" in crime-busting), these two ladies solve mysteries the average law-enforcement agencies don't have the libido for! Written by Celestino Pes and illustrated by Nik Guerra, Magenta is presented in a retro "John Willie" style, but her adventures are wickedly timeless. More mouth-burning spiciness from Italy, brought to the US by SQP!

Sensual and softly surreal, the nude photography of Ralph Gibson frames the female form both organically and graphically, referencing art history while also innovating in the arena of erotic imagery, at once summoning visceral sensation and calling out for tactile attention. Thumb through this exquisite tribute to the contours and curves of womanhood and experience the intimacy of the photographic lens. Reviving TASCHEN's sold-out Collector's Edition, this tribute gathers the best of Gibson's exquisite nudes alongside some of his most recent works in an accessible, revised format, complete with a fresh in-depth interview by Eric Fischl. Strikingly graphic, meticulously composed, and loaded with subtle provocations, the master photographer's mysterious, dreamlike images pay homage to greats such as Man Ray and Edward Weston, while continually pursuing new frontiers. "A photographer once said that beauty in women is endless. Perhaps it was I who said it. [...] I love photographing women and could say that the form of the female body is absolute and perfect." -Ralph Gibson

The first commercial camera was introduced in 1839. By 1865 technology enabled ordinary men to create photographic negatives, and they immediately began taking and distributing photos of naked women. The French led the way, and it was the French who produced the first nude magazines in 1880, as souvenirs for patrons of Parisian music halls. Newsstand magazines followed, and the elegant La Vie Parisienne (Paris Life), full of sexy fiction and illustrations, debuted in 1914. It might all have stayed in Paris if not for WWI, when German and American troops carried the magazines home. American Wilford Fawcett launched Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang (named after a WWI bomb) in 1919, helping launch the first sexual revolution of the 1920s, leading to SEX magazine from birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Decadent Weimar Berlin produced cabaret, fetish and free love magazines, countered by nudist titles pushing fascist politics, culminating in the 1933 Berlin book burning. The 1930s economic depression boosted demand for cheap escape, and men's magazines delivered. There were film magazines of sexy starlets; "model study" art magazines; hardcore comics called Tijuana Bibles; "spicy" fiction digests with sexy painted covers; and detective titles of bad dames. When another world war erupted it required pinup magazines for fighting men, and after the war new men's magazines rose from the ashes. Volume 1 of this series features over 700 covers and photos from France, Germany, the U.S., England, Turkey, Austria, Spain, Argentina and more, plus informative text.

Newly revised and expanded, this second edition of Timon Screech's definitive "Sex and the Floating World" offers a real assessment of the genre of Japanese paintings and prints today known as shunga. Changes in Japanese law in the 1990s enabled erotic images to be published without fear of prosecution, and many shunga picture-books have since appeared. There has, however, been very little attempt to situate the imagery within the contexts of sexuality, gender or power. Questions of aesthetics, and of whether shunga deserve a place in the official history of Japanese art, have dominated, and the question of the use of these images has been avoided. Timon Screech seeks to re-establish shunga in a proper historical frame of culture and creativity. Shunga prints are not like any other form of picture for the simple fact that they are overtly about sex. And once we begin to examine them first and foremost as sexual apparatus, then we must be prepared for some surprises. The author opens up for us the strange world of sexual fantasy in the Edo culture of eighteenth-century Japan, and investigates the tensions in class and gender of those that made and made use of shunga.

"Girls, Gags & Giggles," ran publisher Robert Harrison's recipe for dishing up pin-up to the American male. Men loved his tasty dishes, a mixture of strippers and starlets dressed in outfits so fetishistic no one noticed they were never nude. While other magazines delivered the girl next door, Harrison's publications banked on bad girls in satin and leather, fishnet stockings, and six-inch heels performing slapstick stunts straight from the burlesque stage. Harrison lured his readers in with vibrantly painted covers by top pin-up artists Earl Moran, Billy DeVorss and, most famously, Peter Driben. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition celebrates this eye-catching candy with every single cover from Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter, Eyeful, Flirt, and Whisper, from 1942 to 1955, as well as interior spreads, featuring, among others, a budding Bettie Page. In an age when far more graphic material is the norm, 1000 Pin-Up Girls celebrates an era of pin-up and pulp style to fuel your erotic imagination. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

While the female nude has long played a conspicuous role in western iconography, the male nude has not always enjoyed such attention, or acceptance. This ode to the male physique celebrates the evolving, at one time illicit, art form from anonymous 19th century erotica through to contemporary work from David Hockney and Duane Michaels. Through the classic, the playful, and the provocative, it explores the compositions, postures, and role-playing of this often under-explored genre. Esteemed masters such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes or Robert Mapplethorpe are all there, alongside Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, famed for his homoerotic images of nude youths in classical postures in Sicily. Further highlights include illustrations from Physique Pictorial, the leading organ of the mid-50s gay scene and a pioneer in gay publishing. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!