Erotic photo art has lost much of its exquisite soul since Playboy and other girlie monthlies repackaged the human body for massmarket consumption. Ever-bigger print runs of increasingly grotesque photos of women in every imaginable position have edged out emotion and reduced erotica to mere physical sex appeal. Only in the late 1970s did great men like Helmut Newton and Mapplethorpe come to the fore with high-quality art photography. As leading expert and collector of erotic art Alexandre Dupouy points out, "In the past 40 years, most photographers captured women’s bodies in sexually arousing positions, with only a handful of true artists trying to capture the erotic aura that women radiate." This book is a journey through a century of collector’s photographs that set forth how our perception of woman has developed over time and how the erotic dimensions of modesty and tenderness find expression on celluloid.

The author goes on to provide a tightly reasoned rationale that stakes out the hallmarks of a true "French School of Erotic Art Photography". The models have a distinctly natural appeal that dates back to a time when there were no plastic surgeons around to reshape models before they faced the shutter. This alone makes each photo a sincerely emotional experience.