Bookshelf: Naked Women for the Holidays 

La Petite Mort
The title of La Petite Mort (Taschen)
refers to the French euphemism for orgasm and the women in Canadian
photographer Will Santillo’s massive 208-page picture book are achieving
“the little death” their own way. Each woman in Santillo’s tome — which
includes a pretty wide cross section of young and old, fit and fat —
was asked to masturbate to climax while he captured the moment on
sepia-toned film, capturing a normally hidden beauty. None of the women
seems posed for the camera, at least not in the sense that you’d find
from male-aimed pornography; many in fact are facing away. Even better,
editor and author Dian Hanson (who did the gay fave book, Tom of Finland XXL)
interviewed almost 40 of the women in the book to talk about their
experiences, offering a nice girl-next-door take on masturbation.