Ruth Bernhard:The Eternal Body

For over half a century, acclaimed photographer Ruth Bernhard has worked to "simplify, isolate, and give emphasis to form with greatest clarity" in her radiant photographs of the female nude. Now, with Chronicle Books' timely reissue of her best-selling volume, The Eternal Body, Bernhard's most evocative images are once again available in a superb collection, complete with an insightfill text, that pays tribute to a living legend. Hauntingly sensual yet classically reserved, the book's ethereal duotone photographs appear to be illuminated from within so that even the simplest lines of the human form -- a draped torso, a curved neck, an angled limb -- take on a complexity not often seen in work of this kind. A master artist whose technical prowess places her among the ranks of the greatest photographers of our time, Ruth Bernhard has created a masterpiece of expression and sensitivity in The Eternal Body.