-- Fitness competition is a popular new genre of bodybuilding, focusing on the total athlete -- qualities of grace and beauty, along with physical attributes, earn high marks
-- Contains 200 B&W photos portraying the top contenders in the field with text about their careers
For more than a decade, Paul Goode's celebrated photographs of bodybuilders and women athletes have graced the pages of books and magazines. He has photographed virtually every major competitor in bodybuilding and in fitness; competition, a sport that recognizes grace, beauty, and health along with muscular physique. The advent of this new fitness competition -- which is ideal for women athletes who believe in weight training but stay away from hardcore bodybuilding because of its bulk and lack of femininity -- make for a rich variety of photographic subjects for Goode.
His black-and-white stills of these beautiful women have been collected for Physique and feature such top fitness competitors as Carol Semple, Mia Finnegan, and Debbie Kruck. Unlike the bodybuilders he has photographed, Goode says these women are less concerned with the portrayal of their muscles than with the overall look of their physique. Their facial expressions are as important as their bodies, and bikinis and leotards -- traditional attire for bodybuilding models -- give way to clothing, draped fabrics, and in some cases, nothing.
The best of the resulting photographs of some of the most beautiful female bodies in the world are displayed in this artistic collection. Goode's goal, he says, is to showoff the women not as sexual objects, but as women proud of their physical accomplishments.
