Nude photography is a style of art photography which depicts the nude human body as a study. Nude photography should be distinguished from glamour photography

Glamour photography

Glamour photography is a genre of photography whereby the subjects, usually female, are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. The subjects may be fully clothed or seminude, but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer and being pornographic photography.Glamour...

, which places more emphasis on the model and her/his sexuality

Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

, and treats the model as the primary subject. Nude photography should also be distinguished from erotic photography, which has a sexually suggestive component

Nudity and sexuality

In most societies and cultures, human nudity is often associated with sexuality. Many people are sexually attracted to nudity, which they find to be erotic and sexually arousing...

. Nude photography is also distinguished from pornographic photography, which is of a sexually explicit nature.

Many photographers consider an art nude

Art nude

An art nude is a work of art that takes the naked human form as its dominant subject. The term is used for painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.-Western tradition:...

 photograph to be a one that studies the human body, rather than the person. A photograph of a person that is meant to be recognized is called a portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

, and nude photographs often do not show a face at all. Nude photography is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. As an art form, nude photography is a stylized depiction of the nude body with the line and form of the human figure as the primary objective. Photographers sometimes use extremes of light and shadow, oiled skin, and shadows falling across the body to show texture and structure of the body.

Early photographers often depicted the nudity of women like the one we see here by Félix-Jacques Moulin

Félix-Jacques Moulin

Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin was a French photographer.In 1849, Moulin opened a photographer's shop at 31 bis rue du Faubourg Montmartre and started producing daguerreotypes of young girls aged 14 to 16...

. Many, like Edward Weston

Edward Weston

Edward Henry Weston was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of...

, Ruth Bernhard

Ruth Bernhard

Ruth Bernhard was an American photographer.-Early life:Bernhard was born in Berlin and studied at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1925–27. Bernhard's father, Lucian Bernhard, was known for his poster and typeface design.-Photography career:In 1927 Bernhard moved to New York City, where her...

 and Jerry Avenaim

Jerry Avenaim

Jerry Avenaim is an American photographer best known for his fashion and celebrity images.-Early life:...

, preferred to depict the lines of a body as a piece of art. They imported from the terminology of painting the terms art nude

Art nude

An art nude is a work of art that takes the naked human form as its dominant subject. The term is used for painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.-Western tradition:...

 and figurenude to avoid suggestions that their works were erotica

Erotica

Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...

 or pornography

Pornography

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

. Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...

 helped pioneer the later works that deliberately blurred the boundaries between erotic and artistic nude photography.

See also

• Art nude
  Art nude
  An art nude is a work of art that takes the naked human form as its dominant subject. The term is used for painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.-Western tradition:...
  
  
• Depictions of nudity
• Fine art photography
  Fine art photography
  Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides a visual account for news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to...