Underworld

This book is an impressive compendium of photographs of the body in underclothing. Spanning a period from the 1880s to the 1990s, it includes work by such photographers as Lartigue, Cunningham, Meisel, Rheims, Newton, Markus, von Unwerth, Kertész, Dahl-Wolfe, Brassaï, and seventy-five others.

Anne Rice writes the introduction to this excellent, large-format collection of emotionally charged, sometimes kinky photos of partially clad people. The title puns on the word underwear and sexy, secret lives. No wonder it attracted Anne Rice's intelligent attention--that and the fact that author Kelly Klein is donating all her proceeds to the CFDA Foundation Fund for AIDS.

"The camera empowers you to be intimate with the lens, even abandoned, in a way that may not be possible with another human," Rice muses. "This book is a monument to our freedom, not only to express ourselves but to want more than we are allowed. The camera is the safest vehicle for this excess."

Klein has superb taste in shutterbugs: Brassai, Man Ray, David Salle, Sally Mann, David Hockney, Cindy Sherman, and anonymous snappers of eye-grabbing scenes. The juxtapositions are good: Christy Turlington perfectly complements a 1930 Lartigue model; a Bruce Weber tableau matches a 1945 Playtex ad. You see a side of the doomed model Gia here in curlers that even the tell-all bio Thing of Beauty can't tell you about.

This is a good book done for a good cause. --Tim Appelo