Bookshelf: Naked Women for the Holidays 

Artists for decades have captured the female body in print, but few as wonderfully as the late lesbian photographer Tee A. Corinne, whose imagery intertwined women’s private parts with naturescapes, blending the erotic with the natural world. The subject of a recent exhibition at New York’s Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, “Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography,” Corinne would be pleased with some of the newest coffee table books that look at women, well, differently. Here are eight of this year’s best photo tomes — some by women, a couple by men — that any lesbian or bisexual woman would love for a holiday gift.

Naked Beauty
Of
the myriad of photographers looking at the female form, former model
turned photographer Sylvie Blum brings an undeniably unique perspective
to Naked Beauty ($69, teNeues). Blum, who has worked with iconic artists like Helmut Newton and Andreas H. Bitesnich, bathes women in a gentle light and lets her subjects transform on film into thrilling naked living sculptures. Every page is
sumptuous and fascinating and she gets props for including women of
color — very often an afterthought in erotic photography. The 160-page Naked is available in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian editions with a forward by Anne Wilkes Tucker.