Before this buttocks-themed focus on monographic publications devoted exclusively to the posterior soon comes to an end, today’s column will, with a few repetitions from the previous one but with undeniable delight, linger over the most enticing posteriors firm and shapely photographed during the interwar years, then at the end of the 20th century and beyond. The aim is in part to show that, in the second half of the last century, the Germans Josef Breitenbach [Ill. 5] and Günter Rössler [Ill. 6], followed by Günter Blum [Ill. 7-10], unquestionably remained among the finest representatives of nude photography. But the very personal selection I am offering you was not dictated solely by my preferences, since, in addition to the great sensual plastician Lucien Clergue [Ill. 11-14], neither André de Diénès, nor John Everard, nor Fernand Michaud appears here which would have required an additional chapter. This anthological selection also aims to (re)highlight the creations of artists rather rare in publishing, such as Martin Munkacsi [Ill. 1-3] and the tender Nell Dorr [Ill. 4], while sharing with you my recent discoveries of contemporary photographers, almost all still alive and active, such as Fabrizio Ferri [Ill. 15], Hervé Lewis [Ill. 16-17], Thomas Ruff [Ill. 18], and Ralf Mohr [Ill. 19-20], as well as Reka Nyari [Ill. 21] and Atze Haytsma [Ill. 22-23], and also Matthieu Sonnet [Ill. 24-25]…, intentionally chosen so as to compose a contemporary cosmopolitan florilegium of buttocks. And I would be remiss not to reserve a deserved place at the end for Dahmane (Benanteur), the French Newton, for his marked predilection for views a retro and, as a result, his generous supply of selected and enviable posteriors, as one can see in illustrations 26 and 27.
“It is the most protected, the most secret part of the body…, wrote Jeanloup Sieff. It is also, plastically speaking, the most moving part of the body (in ladies, naturally), made of curves and promises… We shall dwell on it next time. We will then discover that, when it comes to buttocks, there are two schools: pear or apple, oval or round, small or abundant, in short, callipygian or Hottentot; without neglecting the essential nudity, buttocks entirely bare as on the first morning of Eden or partially covered with tiny bits of lace silken Brazilian or satin garter belt, retro and so conducive to multiple delicious fantasies. Jeanloup Sieff was the first to sense this vein and, confronting taboos, would offer a spectacular illustration of it with his Hommage à quatre-vingt treize derrières, which freed the buttock from the reserve in which it had remained cloistered; thus, quite unintentionally, opening the floodgates to the unbridled influx of the early 21st century, which would overwhelm refined amateurs with a deluge of buttocks of every kind.
Alain-René Hardy
L’ivre de nus
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