Male Nude (Back Study), New York, 1952

Estate of Robert Noakes

In this image, an unidentifiable nude male has his back turned to the camera, left arm behind him with his hand splayed open, and one leg up in front of him, cast in shadow. Horst’s focus on capturing the naked body, which began in the early 1950s and was first exhibited in Paris in 1953, stands out distinctly among the rest of the photographer's oeuvre. His use of Chiaroscuro in defining the highlights and contours of the body takes on a classical quality, sculptural in nature and emphasizes an idealization of the human figure. Horst’s figural studies were reprinted using the platinum-palladium process in the 1980s.