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