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Rating: 
Summary: Diverse and wide-ranging nudes
Review: ...Despite having fewer big names, the book does not fall short with regard to the incredible breadth and variety of nude female subjects, photographic styles, and historical periods (1850 to present day). The female subjects are young and old, beautiful and grotesque, fat and skinny, white, black, and Asian. And there's at least one celebrity (Marilyn Monroe). The images can be called realistic or surreal, pictorialistic or artistic, hard-core or soft-core, experimental or intentional, clever or lucky, and serious or playful. I have to give Mr. Braham a lot of credit for bringing all this together in one book. The following are some of my favorite and not-so-favorite nudes in the book: Eve Arnold was the first female photographer to work for Magnum, a prominent photo agency. She was a celebrity photographer and is best known for her photos of Marilyn Monroe. Her color photo shows Marilyn sitting on a chair with her nude back facing the camera and a profile of her face. Nick Clements' "Shaved Woman" is perhaps the book's most eye-popping (or obscene) picture. It is a stark and graphic close-up of a standing woman's clean-shaven genitals in full color. Larry Fink shows a chest shot of a woman squeezing her left breast to spew out a few streams of breast milk into the air. Some of it apparently has been collected in a small jar which she holds in her hand. David M. Glover's black-and-white photo titled "Joy" is of a huge, mountainous, nude woman looking up with joy with both arms reaching up toward the sky. Nadav Kander's "Irma" is a blunt and too-real frontal portrait of an elderly, nude woman. Her breasts are drooping, and her face is deeply wrinkled along with the rest of her body. It's a hair-raising picture which shows how the human body can age. I was appalled by the deep wrinkles on the body other than the face and arms. Even my grandmother (90+ years old) was not that wrinkled other than on the face and arms. Patrick Lichfield's "Checkered Cab" is a shot of an attractive, topless woman in a yellow, checkered taxi. She's framed by the car's window. Many of my friends liked this picture. Paul Murphy is another artist who photographed an elderly woman, 70 years old perhaps. She's posed like a confident, glamour model with her head thrown back and chin up while her nude chest juts forward. Her wrinkled face and neck contrast well with her smooth chest. Bob Norris created a dreamy, soft, and light-colored portrait titled "Daria." It's a head and chest shot of an attractive, blue-eye blond woman. He painted the model's skin with white paint and used 8x10 in. Polaroid film. Erwin Olaf shows a repulsive-looking old woman (looks like an elderly Boy George when he was in Culture Club) holding a large fish to her stomach and chest. Really gross. Philbert Ono. My black-and-white photo is called "Century Celebration." It's a nude Japanese woman jumping up in the photo studio with a white background. I... Paul Torcello's "Sachi Bag" is a very clever, digitally-altered advertising photograph of a nude, mannequin-like woman whose buttocks were digitally replaced with the smooth, curving side of a brand-name bag which perfectly fit the contours of her derriere. Jan Zwart's "Two Women" is one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking images in the book. It shows two women standing against a wall. One woman is a Muslim from Morocco and she is completely covered in black clothing except for her eyes and eyebrows. The other woman is a Westerner who is totally nude except for her eyes and eyebrows which are covered by a black blindfold. The obvious contrast is striking and a commentary of two different cultures. I was a little disappointed that only one Japanese photographer (Nobuyoshi Araki) was included, and his contribution was quite tame. It's just a nude Japanese woman sitting on the floor with her back leaning against the wall next to a bedroom. It would've been great to see a few more Japanese photographers. (I'm actually a Japanese-American so I don't count as a Japanese photographer.)
Rating:
Summary: Women - Not just the ones you expected.
Review: As the editor points out in the intro, "nude" usually means "nude European female 20-ish, and probably thin."
This book does a lot better. Yes, the subjects are mostly or all nude, and yes they're all women. No, they are not all Anglo, as Phan, Sullivan, and Torcello show. No, they are not all young adults, as Murphy and Kander show. No, they are not all thin, as Glover, Casanave, and Perotte show.
Yes, they are fully functioning women, as O'Sullivan and Fink show, with surprising tributes to physical motherhood. And yes, the female shape is a wonderful thing, simply as a shape, as Carnegie, Lategan, and others show - whatever it is they show.
These pictures give much to think about. Saudek's "Ballerine" proves that age strikes different parts of a woman differently. Look at this portrait again, but not the face, to see what I mean - youth lasts a lot longer than you might think. Go back to Braham's Flower and allow yourself a giggle before you even see where the humor lies. Go all the way forward to Zeschin's contribution, and see why 'bigger is better' just isn't true. Not false, surely, but not true.
The book is organized alphabetically by the working name (not necessarily the born name) of the photographer. In other words, it is utterly random with respect to dates, style, subject, technique, or any other aspect of the images themselves. This emphasizes the photos, the individual women, and the spectrum of womanhood. Still, it leaves me hanging in some intellectual sense - is there some underlying order that I've missed, or is it my job to impose my own order?
I am passionate about women's beauty, as is the editor. Whatever you may have thought, this is a clearly non-erotic view of womanhood, in most cases. Being bare, even being fully sexually functional, are different from being erotic.
-- wiredweird
Rating:
Summary: I was pleased with this purchase
Review: I really like the format of this book - one page with a large photo, the opposite page with the bio about the photographer and some information about the chosen work. It's a heavy book and of good quality, and the photos range from abstract to classic to fetish and everything in between. Some you have seen before, a lot are by new names and pics. I think it is a great companion to the Male version - "Exposed". My only question is that is doesn't really seem to be any "history" - just a collection of good photos from a wide time range - think perhaps the title makes it seem something it is not. I liked the book and have it on my coffee table.
Rating:
Summary: I was pleased with this purchase
Review: This is yet another random catalog of pictures of naked women. The authors make no point other than to identify the photographer. Some of these pictures are good, some are bad, some are boring, most are utterly unimportant silly testimonials to the authors' pedestrian taste. It is what you should expect from a title that equates naked with nude. I'd also repeat that the "Editorial Review" seems to be about a different book.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Title, small book
Review: This is yet another random catalog of pictures of naked women. The authors make no point other than to identify the photographer. Some of these pictures are good, some are bad, some are boring, most are utterly unimportant silly testimonials to the authors' pedestrian taste. It is what you should expect from a title that equates naked with nude. I'd also repeat that the "Editorial Review" seems to be about a different book.
Rating: 
Summary: The naked truth about Naked Women!
Review: To start with, you can disregard the editorial review above. It's so
inaccurate it might be talking about another book altogether!
Many of the photographers it mentions -- Angel Baccassino,
Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Larry
Clarke, Peter Lindbergh, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, Herb Ritts,
and Mario Testino -- are NOT represented in this book! But the
others mentioned are here. And many more, too. Most of them
are unfamiliar to me, but I haven't followed the photographic
scene in a long time, so it's no reflection on then that I've never
heard of them. Some of the great ones I do remember are here,
such as Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, Eadweard Muybridge,
Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Eugene Atget, Imogen
Cunningham, and Brassai. Having tried my hand at photographing the female nude some
years back, I know it's not as easy as one might think to get good,
professional, artistic results. One needs more than a naked woman
and a camera! One needs some inspiration, intuition, creativity,
and rapport with the subject or the most expensive equipment and
the most shapely woman won't achieve much but vapid,
amateurish, or lewd photos. My own limited attempt at the genre
was interesting and enjoyable, but I knew I had no talent for it. So
I can respect even more the really great photographers who have
mastered this difficult art form. The photographs here range from 19th century pictorialism to 21st
century modern abstract. Some of them are really striking, such as
Paul Murphy's topless portrait of a 70 year old woman posing like
a glamour girl, her drawn and weathered face and arms in stark
contrast to her remarkably young-looking smooth breasts! And
Jan Zwart's study of two women, a Moslem and a Westerner, with
the Moslem woman covered from head to toe in a Burka with only
her eyes showing, and the Western woman completely naked
except that her eyes are covered! An interesting, ironic comment
on two distinctly different cultures. Jemima Stehli's self-portrait
with her nude model is also good, but it would have had more
impact if she, too, had been nude. Lewis Morley's demure nude
portrait of Christine Keeler, the woman who brought down the
British government in 1963 with the Profumo scandal, belies the
tumult she once caused. She looks like an innocent school-girl
here. And John Knill's photo titled simply "Bottom" is just that --
a large image of a very impressive, curvaceous female bottom. This book is for adults only. Some of the images are quite
graphic. Some are just ugly and others grotesque. A few are so
abstract that the subject, a nude, is unrecognizable as such. So it
pretty much covers the whole spectrum of nude photography as an
art form. I recommend it to all fans of the female form in
photography.
Rating:
Summary: The naked truth about Naked Women!
Review: To start with, you can disregard the editorial review above. It's so
inaccurate it might be talking about another book altogether!
Many of the photographers it mentions -- Angel Baccassino,
Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Larry
Clarke, Peter Lindbergh, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, Herb Ritts,
and Mario Testino -- are NOT represented in this book! But the
others mentioned are here. And many more, too. Most of them
are unfamiliar to me, but I haven't followed the photographic
scene in a long time, so it's no reflection on then that I've never
heard of them. Some of the great ones I do remember are here,
such as Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, Eadweard Muybridge,
Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Eugene Atget, Imogen
Cunningham, and Brassai. Having tried my hand at photographing the female nude some
years back, I know it's not as easy as one might think to get good,
professional, artistic results. One needs more than a naked woman
and a camera! One needs some inspiration, intuition, creativity,
and rapport with the subject or the most expensive equipment and
the most shapely woman won't achieve much but vapid,
amateurish, or lewd photos. My own limited attempt at the genre
was interesting and enjoyable, but I knew I had no talent for it. So
I can respect even more the really great photographers who have
mastered this difficult art form. The photographs here range from 19th century pictorialism to 21st
century modern abstract. Some of them are really striking, such as
Paul Murphy's topless portrait of a 70 year old woman posing like
a glamour girl, her drawn and weathered face and arms in stark
contrast to her remarkably young-looking smooth breasts! And
Jan Zwart's study of two women, a Moslem and a Westerner, with
the Moslem woman covered from head to toe in a Burka with only
her eyes showing, and the Western woman completely naked
except that her eyes are covered! An interesting, ironic comment
on two distinctly different cultures. Jemima Stehli's self-portrait
with her nude model is also good, but it would have had more
impact if she, too, had been nude. Lewis Morley's demure nude
portrait of Christine Keeler, the woman who brought down the
British government in 1963 with the Profumo scandal, belies the
tumult she once caused. She looks like an innocent school-girl
here. And John Knill's photo titled simply "Bottom" is just that --
a large image of a very impressive, curvaceous female bottom. This book is for adults only. Some of the images are quite
graphic. Some are just ugly and others grotesque. A few are so
abstract that the subject, a nude, is unrecognizable as such. So it
pretty much covers the whole spectrum of nude photography as an
art form. I recommend it to all fans of the female form in
photography.
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