The Nude in Photography. Getty, 2014. Born as Venus on the half-shell of the centuries-old tradition of the nude in painting, the nude first appeared as a subject in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as a constantly evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day. This volume examines the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture, through the study of live nude models for aesthetic or scientific purposes, to the emerging practice of exploring the human body as pure form. The seventy-eight works, selected from the vast collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum and contextualized here in the essay "Masterworks of the Nude", cover the entire arc of photographic history in a way 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. / 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.