Clean Sheets Bookstore

100 Years of Erotica : A Photographic Portfolio of Mainstream American Subculture from 1845-1945 by Paul Aratow
Ever since the advent of photography, commercial photographers and artists have turned their camera's eye to the human body--often in the most intimate settings. "100 Years of Erotica" explores the rich, varied, and--why beat around the bush--downright shocking tradition of erotic portraits of men and women engaged in ...(ahem)...a variety of recreational activities. Author Paul Aratow opens up the parlor doors, curtains, and paravents onto a subculture that has flourished throughout the ages, presenting a range of erotic photography from the mid-1800s to the mid-1990s. -- the publisher, Ten Speed Press

Araki : Tokyo Lucky Hole by Nobuyoshi Araki
Over 700 pages of black and white photographs illustrating Araki's vision of the seamier side of Tokyo nightlife. An excellent gallery of Araki's work can also be found here.

Femalia edited by Joani Blank, with Michael Perry and Michael A. Rosen
Not surprisingly, this is a book that seeks to illustrate the beauty of female genetalia. One Amazon reviewer writes: "It is a book the reveals a spectrum of female beauty few have ever seen. These pictures are presented without sensationalism and without censure. They work as art. They work as anatomy lesson. They work as images for a holy altar to the Great Mother of us all." Wow.

Fully Exposed : The Male Nude in Photography edited by Emmanuel Cooper
Lavishly illustrated with over 200 photos, this volume tells not only one but multiple histories of the production of images of the male nude, setting the photographer and the model within our cultural and historical perception, and prejudices. Includes the work of Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, and Robert Mapplethorpe, among others.

Porn Art by Dahmane
This book by Dahmane features French porn star Chloe Des Lysses playing with a large choice of toys in various settings. Enthusiastically endorsed by the Good Vibrations Store. Read the Clean Sheets review by Christophe

Voyeur edited by Steven Diamond and Charles Melcher
Photography is all about voyeurism, and this volume reads as a who's-who of watchers past and present. Included are Atget, Cartier-Bresson and Degas through Hockney, Sherman and Demarchelier catching their subjects before, during and after the act.

Love and Desire : Photoworks by William A. Ewing
from Amazon.com - "Love and Desire collects a diverse range of images that attest to Ewing's belief that "all photographs are, at some level, about love, and all photographs are triggered, to varying degrees, by desire." ... Julia Margaret Cameron explores a family bond in her depiction of the Madonna and child, dated 1865. In 1955, Frank Horvat, in all likelihood standing on a Paris bridge, observes a couple kissing on the quay below. Helmut Newton explores obsession in the mid-1980s with his portrait of a stockinged ankle and foot in a black stiletto heel. Brassaï's 1932 portrait of Janet--in which Janet is depicted from the waist up, lying back on a bed, her eyes closed, with a look of ecstasy on her face--opens the Libidos chapter."

Forbidden Photographs by Charles Gatewood
A deluxe new edition of a classic book featuring America's sexual underground by the man described as the family photographer of America's erotic underground.

Naked Pictures Of My Ex-Girlfriends by Mark Helfrich
In Naked Pictures Of My Ex-Girl- friends, Mark Helfrich shares with us what most have hidden away or have long ago destroyed -- intimate, private pictures of his ex-girlfriends, a decade's worth from 1970 to 1980. Helfrich explains "...it was no big deal photographing my girlfriends topless or nude, almost all of them were thrilled to pose for me, because they knew I was so into it. It was fun. It was like playing a game. It was like living Antonioni's 'Blow Up." This collection of black & white and colour images is presented as a nostalgic diary from the carefree sexual seventies, a glimpse of a time and life many wish they could have lived."

Fetish Girls by Eric Kroll
Kroll is perhaps the best fetish photographer laboring the fields of fantasy. Fetish Girls is an exquisite work, and worthy of gracing the most daring of coffee tables. The highly charged erotic images in this book will haunt you for weeks; visions of equally exotic and weird women in provocative states of dress and undress. --from Amazon

The Lusty Lady by Erika Langley
A beautiful book documenting Langley's time as a peepshow performer in Seattle's female-owned and operated Lusty Lady club. As wonderful an art book as it is an exercise in photojournalism. Read the Clean Sheets review by Gary Meyer

Digital Diaries by Natacha Merritt
Twenty-two year old photographer Natacha Merritt began taking intimate digital photos of herself while studying law in France. Natacha in bed, in the shower, having sex, masturbating. We're talking hold the camera at arm's length and click. An interesting exploration of the breakdown between personal and public offered by technology. This book got started after fetish photographer Eric Kroll found Merritt's webpage and put her in touch with Benedikt Taschen. Narcissism, voyeurism and Internet fame. Read the Clean Sheets review by C.Z. Czelling

The Best of Helmut Newton by Helmut Newton
Featuring a wonderful cross-section of Helmut Newton's work, this album includes fashion photographs for French Vogue, dating from the 1970s, his "big nudes," portraits of celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Salvador Dali, and Daryl Hannah, and his masterful cityscapes, night scenes, and ballet images.

Adonis: Masterpieces of Erotic Male Photography by Michelle Olley
From the art of the ancient Greeks to today's high-fashion photography, the male body has always been the object of fascination. Adonis brings together a selection of the most exciting and significant male erotic photography taken by some of the century's greatest photographers, from Cecil Beaton to Herb Ritts. It is a unique example of how this kind of photography has evolved, illustrating how techniques, styles, and fashions have changed over the decades. -- Book Jacket

Self-Images: 100 Women by André Rival
The most difficult task any photographer faces, aside from policeman telling him to get her dressed and off the beach, is seeing through to the real personality of his model and capturing it in a photo. Rival let the models do it. He set up a bare, white room with a remote-controlled camera, a monitor to show what the camera sees (but carefully set out of camera range) and then let 100 women from all walks of life go inside and take their own self-portrait. The results are stunning. Some of the photos are erotic, some cute, some revealing, some touching, all very real.

Fetish: Fashion, Sex, and Power by Valerie Steele
More of an illustrated history of fetish fashion than a photo book, fashion historian Steele's volume is thorough and her enthusiasm for her subject is obvious. Perhaps the one criticism is her insistance on taking a middle-of-the-road stance on any of the issues her essays raise.

Betty Page Confidential by Bunny Yeager
"Yeager brings out the best in Betty Page in her ideal milieu, the beaches of Florida, her skin a flawless suntanned sheen, her infectious joy lighting up that thousand-watt smile even brighter and her natural intimacy with the camera making you swear you were there. Betty cavorts about an amusement park and the shoreline, playful, puckish, clowning with some seaweed, mugging on some kiddie rides, blazing with energy and abandon." Read the Clean Sheets review by Gary Meyer

Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949-1969 by Jaye Zimet
"In a labor of love, art director/book designer/obsessive collector Jaye Zimet has reproduced two hundred vintage paperback lesbiana covers for our delectation. These books served a dual audience. For straight men, they were porno (though the sex was seldom explicit); for lesbians, they were survival literature. They were popular...Zimet mixes in delicious snippets of purple prose and serves as a wise-cracking gallery guide: "He gives us breast cleavage and rear cleavage in the same pose!" She divides the covers into categories based on visual and thematic tropes. In addition to Cleavage, there's Longing Looks, Bi, Bi Love, Cliterature and Psychobabble -- pseudo-scientific exploitation inspired by the Kinsey Report." Read the Clean Sheets review by Gary Meyer