This book provides a survey of the nude in photography, tracing its development from early 19th-century antecedents through to mid-20th-century practice. It examines how photographers have approached the human nude as a subject?its aesthetic, technical and moral dimensions?and shows how photographic nudes were influenced by painting and sculpture but evolved into their own medium-specific form. Lacey discusses key photographers, styles and movements, the shift from allegory to realism, the interplay of form and eroticism, and places the nude within photographic history and theory.