Classic Beauty
Photographs of Female Nudes
June 22 - September 2, 2006

Photographs by
Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lucien Clergue, Valdir Cruz, Fritz Henle, Flor Garduño, and Edward Weston

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Saturday 11 AM - 5 PM

"Taking a picture of the landscape does not mean the photographer has exhausted the subject; the eye continues seeing." (Manuel Alvarez Bravo from the book Nude: Theory)

At a time when the media and the internet has successfully diminished nude photography to pornography or cliché, Throckmorton Fine Art concentrates on nudes that have become, or are becoming, classic imagery. CLASSIC BEAUTY, Photographs of Female Nudes, opens Thursday, June 22, 2006 featuring the work on Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lucien Clergue, Valdir Cruz, Fritz Henle, Flor Garduño, and Edward Weston.

History shows that photographs of the female nude were not instantly socially acceptable. Audiences were not accustomed to viewing the body in its natural form. Today, taboos aside and an attitude that anything goes, the nude has benefited most by Modernist influence and photographers approaching the female form from a surreal and individual perspectives. The photographs in this exhibition combine vintage and contemporary works outlining the effectiveness of fine art nudes produced by different generations. From Manuel Alvarez Bravo's once censored and controversial LA BUENA FAMA (1938) depicting a bandaged woman lying down with "abrojos" and her pubic hair revealed to Flor Garduño's powerful use of the female as poetic metaphor (EL MUNDO, 2001), nude photography continues to challenge time and demand its classicism.

Other highlighted works in the exhibition are Edward Weston's nudes taken in the 1920s, Fritz Henle's photos of the model Nieves from 1943, Valdir Cruz's modern prints of subjects in Brasil and New York, and Lucien Clergue's Mediterranean nudes from the 50s and 70s.