The Naked and the Veiled: The Photographic Nudes of Erwin Blumenfeld

As a book this is a mediocre to poor presentation of an interesting mid-century photographer. The photographs are well reproduced and show a wide range of content and intent. Woman as sex object, woman as hardware, woman as mystified naked girl and anything else that fit Blumenfeld's fantasy.The author is the son of the photographer who tries everything from freudian analysis to name dropping to make his father seem important. This detracts from the work. If you look at the photographs as the record of an artist who worked his way through Europe to New York over the middle 40 years of the twentieth century, you will find some art history and maybe some insight on how the artist evolved and how the craft changed over the most hectic time in its history.Blumenfeld was a pragmatic professional illustrator. Most of his imagery is either derivative or based on tradition. Man Ray, Ruth Bernhard, and many others seem to have influenced him.This is a good collection of different treatments of the nude female figure by an accomplished craftsman. It could serve as a starting point for thinking of how to or how not to approach the subject. Blumenfeld is at his best when he is simply doing graphic illustration and not "serious art". Some of it is warm and funny. His commercial work is very good and should stimulate other artists.Just don't expect the unforgettable originality of Bernhard, Weston, Penn or their ilk.

I had my sister get me this book for Christmas so as to further my study of the nude. Knowing that the work inside was all about a half century or more old, I wasn't expecting highly innovative or original work but I indeed did find it. How stupid of me to think that his art work might be less fresh because he didn't have the photo equipment we now have or a computer. This study of his work is certainly proof positive that all an artist really needs is a first rate imagination! His fascination is the female nude. He "hides" that nude in some way in each shot but his results end up exposing the subject rather than obscuring it. Actually, it was a relief in many ways to see the art work of someone who was neither handicapped nor helped by state of the art machinery and equipment. Don't hold off buying this book because the work came from many earlier decades. The front cover image is very representative of the quality and content inside the book.