10 Famous Nude Photographers to Inspire You

by Lina Thorne • Updated 11/4/2025 · Posted in Photography

Artists have always been captivated by the human form, even long before the camera was invented. Nude photography occupies a unique place in the world of visual art. It’s about peeling back layers to reveal something deeper and more intimate. It invites a photographer to engage with the body as a subject and raises questions of identity, intimacy, aesthetics, and ethics.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying out something new is exactly what can help you grow as a photographer. Nude photography, in particular, can help you improve your communication skills as well as sharpen your eye for composition, light, texture, and shape.

This genre can feel intimidating, of course, no matter if you’ve never taken any nude photos or already have a few sessions under your belt. Where do you begin? How do you approach it with artistry and respect? Well, the best starting point is to look to the masters who have shaped, defined, and continually redefined the genre.

Luckily, here, you’ll learn about the works of famous nude photographers and explore what makes their vision so unique and enduring. By the end, you’ll surely start seeing the human body in a new light.

10 Famous Nude Photographers

The following famous nude photographers are only the tip of the iceberg. But hopefully, their works will inspire and give you some ideas to implement in your work.

1. Edward Weston

Edward Weston (1886 – 1958) was a photographer who could turn a human body into a breathtaking landscape. A master of American modernist photography, Weston was obsessed with forms, shapes, and the intrinsic beauty of objects – be it a pepper, a shell, or a human torso. He helped found the f/64 group on the West Coast and is known for his still lifes, landscapes, and nude photography.

• What’s Special: Weston’s nudes, quite austere and straightforward, are celebrated for their exquisite abstraction. He used light and shadow to sculpt the body, emphasizing curves, lines, and textures, turning limbs, chests, or torsos into abstract compositions. His work is a masterclass in seeing the human form as a perfect geometric sculpture.
• Famous Works: His 1936 black-and-white photograph “Nude (Charis, Santa Monica)” is iconic. The model (his wife at the time) is curled on a rug, her body forming a series of flowing curves that are both recognizably human and completely abstract.

2. Imogen Cunningham

Cunningham (1883-1976) was an American photographer, noted especially for botanical photography, portraits, and nudes. Also, she was one of the early women photographers in a male-dominated field. A founding member of the f/64 group alongside Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham brought a genuine sensibility to her nudes and often drew parallels between the human form and the plant life she photographed.

• What’s Special: Cunningham’s nudes are intimate and gracefully composed. She had a gift for capturing the body in a way that felt quite personal, often focusing on details rather than the full form. Her work celebrates the quiet, natural beauty of the human body with a delicate touch.
• Famous Works: “Triangles” (1928) is a classic example, showcasing her use of interesting composition and soft, natural light to create a powerful and serene image of a female body. The Triangles combines sharp angles and softly curving lines, creating a beautiful contrast. Another famous work is her first nude self-portrait, taken in 1906, where she is resting in nature.

3. Ruth Bernhard

Bernhard (1905-2006) was a German-born American photographer, well known for black-and-white studio nudes and still lifes. A student of the great modernists, Ruth Bernhard developed her own powerful vision. Her nudes are often described as “sculptural” and “sacred”, celebrating the female form with a sense of reverence.

• What’s Special: Bernhard had an unparalleled ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. She often placed her models in simple, domestic settings, using negative space and dramatic lighting to isolate and emphasize the body. Her work feels balanced and deeply respectful.
• Famous Works: “In the Box” from 1962 is a stunning example. The model lies curled inside a small cardboard box. Her naked body creates a harmonious composition, while the soft light accentuates its innate beauty.

4. Robert Mapplethorpe

Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in New York, and died in 1989 of AIDS at the age of 42. He was a perfectionist who sought ideal form. He is best known for his minimalistic black-and-white photography that had flawless composition, exquisite lighting, and classical sensibility.

• What’s Special: His studio nudes are all about sharp focus, careful posing, and minimal background. He treated the human body almost like a still life or sculptural object. He celebrated the athleticism and beauty of the body, often pushing social boundaries with his controversial depictions of the underground BDSM scene and other taboo content.
• Famous Works: “Ajitto” (1981) is a portrait of a seated male nude. Its classical composition and soft, directional lighting make it feel timeless. His other key projects are “X Portfolio” (erotic male nudes) and “Lady: Lisa Lyon” (female bodybuilder portraits).

5. Helmut Newton

Newton (born 1920, died 2004) was a German-Australian photographer who rose to prominence via fashion photography, but frequently incorporated nudity and erotica into his commissioned work and independent prints. His photography works are bold, provocative, and charged with a sense of power and eroticism.

• What’s Special: He often placed his tall, statuesque models in high-fashion or luxurious settings, creating a world of decadence and drama. His work explores themes of voyeurism, dominance, and submission, forcing the viewer to engage with the image on a psychological level.
• Famous Works: The series “Big Nudes” from the 1980s is his most famous. These black-and-white portraits of women are powerful and striking, blurring the lines between portraiture, fashion, and erotic art.

6. Sally Mann

Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia. Her work is deeply personal, often focusing on her family and the landscape of the American South. As she once said, “It’s always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary.”

• What’s Special: Mann’s photography is poetic and unflinchingly honest. She uses a large-format camera and analog processes, giving her images a timeless, sometimes ethereal quality. Her nudes are about intimacy, vulnerability, and the story of a life being lived.
• Famous Works: The entire Immediate Family series is her most notable work. It’s about the raw, fleeting nature of childhood. Though it did spark ethical debate since it includes many nude images of her children.

7. Bettina Rheims

Rheims was born in 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She began her photographic career in the late 1970s. One of her early series documented strip-tease artists and acrobats, which set the stage for her interest in exposed bodies, performance, and nakedness. Over time, her work has navigated glamour, femininity, eroticism, and also political or gender-identity themes.

• What’s Special: Rheims’ nude photography is daring, but not vulgar. She places her naked subjects in fashion-influenced lighting and set design, creating images that feel both commercial and subversive. According to C/O Berlin: “Rheims displays intimacy aggressively… without sentimentality or nostalgia and with a feminine gaze which… never exposes its subjects voyeuristically.”
• Famous Works: Her most famous work is “Chambre Close”, which is a color series of nude women in a stylized, boudoir-like environment.

8. John Coplans

Coplans (1920–2003) was born in London, moved to the U.S., had a long career as a painter, art critic, magazine editor, and museum director, before turning seriously to photography at the age of 60. In a genre often focused on youth and idealized beauty, John Coplans offered a radical perspective. From around 1984, he began photographing his own aging body.

• What’s Special: He often photographed his aging body against a plain white background, with high clarity. Coplans’ work is a powerful statement against ageism and conventional aesthetics. By focusing on his own hairy, wrinkled, and aging body, he created abstract compositions that are both confrontational and deeply human. He always excluded the head to generalize his body.
• Famous Works: His series of self-portraits, such as “Back with Arms Above” (1984), is instantly recognizable for its raw examination of a body rarely seen in art galleries.

9. Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn was born in 1969 in São Paulo, Brazil, and now lives and works in Los Angeles. She’s one of the most celebrated contemporary photographers working with nudity. Her primary photographic focus is the human body, but not in the sense of mere exposure. She aims to explore presence, form, intimacy, and the body’s relation to time, space, and self.

• What’s Special: Kuhn’s work is defined by a profound sense of comfort and spiritual connection. She often develops long-term friendships with her subjects, which translates into an intimate and collaborative atmosphere in her images. Using natural light and minimalist settings, she creates an almost tactile dialogue between the figure and its environment.
• Famous Works: Images from “Evidence” (2007) and “Private” (2014) often feature soft, dappled light falling on the body in sun-drenched, interior spaces. Her “Native” (2010) project explores nudity in intimate, domestic settings.

10. Herb Ritts

Ritts (1952-2002) was an American photographer who worked in celebrity, fashion, and portrait photography. His nudes, while more commercial, is widely admired since they show the human form as a monument of beauty and strength.

• What’s Special: Ritts had a genius for using strong, direct sunlight to create high-contrast images that sculpted the body beautifully. His nudes are less about intimacy and more about celebrating peak physicality and abstract shape.
• Famous Works: Such works as “Fred with Tires” (1984) and the group nude “Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood” (1989) are perfect examples of his ability to transform the human body into a study of form, pattern, and light.

Why You Should Try Nude Photography

1. Master the Light & Composition. Nude photography forces you to become a better photographer. Without clothes to conceal some parts of the body, you’ll have no other choice but to pay attention to how light wraps around skin and to compose your shots to show your model in the most flattering way. You’ll be able to focus more on gestures and poses, and working with negative space.
2. Improve Your Collaborative Skills. A successful nude photoshoot is built on immense trust and clear communication between the photographer and the model. It will teach you how to direct with sensitivity, create a safe and comfortable environment, and build a professional rapport that brings out the best in your subject.
3. Explore Different Themes. Since nudity touches on vulnerability, identity, and body image, it opens up a wide range of narrative possibilities. Through posing, light, and setting, you can convey a variety of emotions and address different themes without a single word.
4. Challenge Your Creative Boundaries. Stepping outside your comfort zone is where growth happens. Nude photography challenges preconceptions and pushes artistic boundaries. It encourages you to ask: “What story can the body tell that nothing else can?”

Use Watermarkly’s Tools to Prep Your Photos

If you’re planning to share your nude photography online, Watermarkly offers a range of easy-to-use tools that can help you prep them quickly:

Our Crop Tool allows you to crop images individually or in bulk. Moreover, it offers built-in cropping presets for different social media platforms. That means you can get your photos perfectly sized for Instagram, Facebook, or your online portfolio in just a few clicks. Just remember one golden rule: try to avoid cropping your subject at the joints – wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. It can make portraits look awkward.

You can also use our online Image Compressor to reduce the file size without losing visible quality. But if you simply need to change pixel dimensions before uploading, then our Resize Photo Tool will be more useful.

If you need to post your work on platforms that restrict the display of nudity, the Blur Face Tool can come in handy. It allows you to softly blur specific areas in an unobtrusive way while keeping the overall composition intact.

Image protection is important, too! As a photographer, your work is your livelihood. Always watermark your images before sharing them online to deter unauthorized use and build brand recognition. With our batch-watermark app, you can easily process multiple photos in one go.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there’s a lot of room for experimentation in nude photography. You can treat a body like a geometrical shape and create something abstract. You can show it in a respectful and tasteful way. You can be blunt, provocative, and lean into eroticism.

The works of the aforementioned famous nude photographers prove that the human body remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration. They teach us that the goal is to find your own relationship with the human form. If you decide to venture into nude photography, approach it with curiosity, respect, preparation, and intention.

Ask yourself:

• What story does it help you tell?
• What emotion does it allow you to explore?
• What boundary does it help you cross?

And remember that nude photography doesn’t need to be provocative and erotic for its own sake, but it can be powerful because it is honest.