Nude Visions - 150 Years Body Images in Photography

The exhibition "Nude Visions" is an introduction to the collection of photographs in the Münchner Stadtmuseum, showing a representative selection of images of the human body. The show starts with so-called "academies", plates used as models by artists like Delacroix and Courbet. Yet, at the same time photographers already made pictures of the nude that had artistic ambitions. Beginning in the 1870s, nude models were placed outside of the studio in the open air, typically in the Mediterranean country-side of Italy or North Africa. Using photography as tool, the late 19th-century "Lebens reform-Bewegung" (Life Reform Movement) in Germany celebrated the naked body's naturalness. Around 1900, pictorialist photographers aimed at elevating the nude to an artistic subject. In the realm of the nude, artistic photography of the 1920s and 1930s found new compositional solutions by employing multiple exposures, solarization, collage techniques and extreme chiaroscuro contrasts and perspectives. The image of the naked body was thus distorted, dematerialized, x-rayed and fragmented. Such experiments continued after World War II, yet a parallel development existed in straight photography, with its clear and natural depictions of the nude. Body Art and Performance artists of the 1970s declared the immediacy of their own physical experiences as a political imperative. The flood of pictures and easy access to the private and intimate, defines nude photography of the 1990s. The exhibition's section on glamour photography starts with works from the early 20th century, when new ideals of stardom were developed in the Hollywood studios. During the 1960s the glamorous nude becomes fully established in advertising photography. In contrast to the female nude, the male nude is not as established in the collective mind. During the 19th century, the male nude was legitimized as a model in art academies, and since the early 20th century in the context of bodybuilding. The pictorialists around 1900 had men pose for pictures with mythological associations. The homosexual emancipation that occurred during the Weimar Republic and continued in the 1960s, witnessed a growing number of gay artists who published an ever increasing range of male nudes.

Artists of the exhibition:

Franz Xaver Bartl  | Johann Josef Blitz  | Francis Bruguière | Wynn Bullock | Jimmy Caruso | Walter Chappell | Lucien Clergue | Frantisek Drtikol | Frank Eugene |  Harun Farocki | Franz Fiedler | Ulrike Frömel | Vincenzo Galdi | Charles Gatewood | Heinz Gebhardt | André Gelpke | Joachim Giesel | Wilhelm von Gloeden | Jaap De Graaf | Franz Grainer | Robert Häusser | Heinz Hajek-Halke | Franz Hanfstaengl | Samuel Haskins | Hermann Heid | Fritz Henle | Theodor Her | Marta Hoepffner | Emil Otto Hoppé | Karl Hubbuch | Louis Igout | Enno Kapitza | André Kertész | Max Koch & Otto Rieth | Herlinde Koelbl | Jörg Koopmann  | Rudolf Koppitz | Germaine Krull | Helmut Lederer | Rudolf Lehnert & Ernst Landrock |  Cheyco Leidmann | Marianne Leissl | Herbert List | Carl Locht | Urs Lüthi | Atelier Manassé |  Guido Mangold | Gaudenzio Marconi | Will McBride | Gérald Minkoff | Pierre Molinier | Stefan Moses | Jan Mutsu | Eadweard Muybridge | Masaya Nakamura | Serge Nazarieff | Floris M. Neusüss | Helmut Newton | Dennis Oppenheim | Guglielmo Plüschow | Wilhelm Pranger |  Norbert Przybilla | Elfriede Reichelt | Esaki Reiji | Oscar Gustave Reijlander | Gerhard Riebicke |  Roberto Rive | Helmut Röttgen | Franz Roh | Thomas Ruff | T.W. Salomon | Napoleon Sarony |  Jan Saudek | Walter Schels | Pascal Sébah & Policarpe Joaillier | Tazio Secchiaroli | Hanna Seewald | Hermann Stamm | Otto Steinert | Bert Stern | Alfred Stieglitz & Clarence H. White |  Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz | Sasha Stone | Frank Stürmer | Karin Székessy | Karel Teige |  Juergen Teller | Jerry Uelsmann | E. Uhlenhut | Timm Ulrichs | Vladimir Vinski | Gerhard Vormwald  | Wallis Weir | Edward Weston | Wicksteed & Palmer | Fritz Witzel | Wols | Willy Zielke