The Male Nude [Paperback]

David Leddick (Editor), Robert Mapplethorpe (Photographer), Herb Ritts (Photographer), David Hockney (Photographer), George Platt Lynes (Photographer), Cecil Beaton (Photographer), Nan Goldin (Photographer), Wolfgang Tillmans (Photographer), Pierre Et Gilles (Photographer), Chuck Close (Photographer)

Book Description

Series: Klotz | Publication Date: October 1998

Featuring work from Guglielmo Pluschow, Fred Holland, Cecil Beaton and David Armstrong, this volume presents a visual compendium of male eroticism.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It is impossible to separate out the history of representations of the naked male from the history of gay male culture, sensibility, or erotica. From the statuary of classical Greece to Michelangelo's David to the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, the nude male form has signified for gay men not only sexual desire but homosexuality itself.

David Leddick's The Male Nude is an almost 800-page survey of the nude male in photography of the past century that presents us with the changes in body type, beauty, and sexual affect that have occurred over the past 100 years, but with evolving notions of "art" and "culture" as well. From Victorian prints of strong men to the "health" photos of the 1940s and '50s to the works of contemporary artists such as Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and Nan Goldin, David Leddick charts the evolutions that the male body--and gay culture--have taken for ten decades. --Michael Bronski

Product Details

• Paperback: 767 pages
• Publisher: Taschen; 1ST edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822879665
• ISBN-13: 978-3822879665
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,631,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Mix of the Haunting and the Trivial, December 5, 1999

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Male Nude (Paperback)

Any one who describes this book as "Just another example of a old man taking pictures of young men" has very probably never seen the book, which includes such diverse photographers as German Leni Reiffenstal and American Robert Mapplethorpe, and which occasionally extends its scope to include photographs of male and female nudes. The photographs range from great art to the trivial effort and from haunting beauty to the occasional effort to shock-- the latter of which focuses, ironically, less on nudity than on activity. While I recommend the book, I must note that the accompanying text is fairly insignificant and the images selected from 1950-1990 are considerably less interesting than those of 1900-1950. I must also note that this is NOT an "outsize" or "coffee table size" book; rather, it is a very thick but otherwise standard-size book; this, however, does not really detract from the content.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lush and Outstanding!!, October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Male Nude (Paperback)

This book is essential to anyone who loves the sublimity of the human male form, whether of straight Or homoerotic nature. The beautiful photographs cover the male nude from 1870's to the present. Many Rare and Never-Before-Seen Photos are inside, on every page. Kinda wish it was hardcover, but that's about my only complaint. A must-have for any lover of the human form or anyone studying the human form. Excellent and Unprecedented!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good General History of an Artform, June 3, 2002

By 

Curtis Lane (Orlando, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Male Nude (Klotz) (Paperback)

There isn't much else I can say that I didn't cover in the title of my review. This is a good collection of photographs divided into time periods, each of which is given a brief essay introduction by Leddick. Leddick, while not a brilliant art historian, is the best I've found on this controversial and often overlooked artform.