Taschen: Erotic Book Legend

Coffee Table Teasers

The world should be grateful to men like Benedikt Taschen. In 1980, in Cologne, he started Taschen Publishing, initially putting out his own extensive, weird and wonderful comic collection. From this seed his book empire grew, rapidly becoming recognised for producing a huge range of high-quality art books – art books, which it could be argued, brought often obscure and unseen photographic works into mainstream bookshops. The content was often fetishistic, sometimes pornographic but always fascinating. Taschen also brought out comic reprints, art photography, books on design, fashion and advertising. Always beautifully thought out, the tomes are often packaged in boxes, sometimes with gifts – a rubber wrist band with a book on Fetish Girls, say, and they are a joy to hold and look at. Innovative and in these air-brushed, oddly anodyne times, refreshingly candid, honest and open-minded, we are always buzzed with news of a new Taschen release.

Fraulein, Ellen von Unwerth Ellen von Unwerth was a supermodel before the term was invented, so she knows a thing or two about photographing beautiful women. Now one of the world’s most original and successful fashion photographers, she pays homage to the world‘s most delectable females in Fräulein. This celebration of our era’s sexiest female icons includes Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Britney Spears, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, Dita von Teese, Adriana Lima, Carla Bruni, Eva Green, Christina Aguilera, Monica Bellucci and dozens more.

MaRIO DE JANEIRO, Mario Testino Mario Testino is one of the world's most successful fashion and portrait photographers. Peruvian by birth, Testino has been fascinated by Rio de Janeiro since his earliest summer vacations. ‘When I was 14, on holiday, and going from my house to the beach and seeing everyone walk everywhere in their tiny bathing suits - the girls and boys were so sexy and carefree and wild - I just could not believe it." This easy sensuality, sexual freedom and lust for life left a deep impression; Testino has been going back ever since, for work and fun, passion and inspiration. Featuring candid shots of exquisite cariocas baring nubile flesh, including supermodel Gisele Bündchen

Rose C’est, Paris, Bettina Rheims Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film on DVD. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but interlocking and complimentary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and artist Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulation, obsession, fetish and seething desire. Equal parts erotica, fashion shoot, art monograph, metaphysical mystery, social and cultural archaeology of the French capital, and neo-noir arthouse film - Rose, c'est Paris is all this and more.

Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, Six Volumes This sumptuous six-volume anthology celebrates the decadence, sophistication and wit of the original men's magazine and its creator. Hugh Hefner's Playboy highlights the extraordinary years from 1953 to 1979, with a selection of each era's spiciest centerfolds and writing by literary icons Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac and Ray Bradbury, as well as some of the most important Playboy Interviews, including Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Richard Nixon, and Roman Polanski. A wealth of never-before-seen ephemera from Hefner's personal archives includes original artwork, cartoons and correspondence.

The Big Book of Legs, Dian Hanson The female leg is an erotic oddity: non-genital, and nearly identical in structure to the male limb, there is no obvious reason why it should be eroticized. Yet through much of history, across many cultures, the female leg was kept covered and treated as taboo, until it became an object of sexual obsession. In Victorian times, the word 'leg' was forbidden in polite society, lest gentlemen be driven wild with lust. Even now, 80 years after women’s legs finally came out of hiding, their allure remains mysterious and powerful.

The Big Book of Breasts, Dian Hanson Dian Hanson explores the origins of mammary madness through three decades of natural big-breasted nudes. Starting with the World War II Bosom-Mania that spawned Russ Meyer, Howard Hughes's The Outlaw and Frederick's of Hollywood, Dian guides you over, around, and in between the dangerous curves of infamous models including Michelle Angelo, Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa De Leeuw, Uschi Digard, Candye Kane, Jennie Lee, Sylvia McFarland, Margaret Middleton, Paula Page, June Palmer, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Linda West, June Wilkinson, Julie Wills, and dozens more, including Guinness World Record holder Norma Stitz, possessor of the World`s Largest Natural Breasts.

Robert Crumb’s Sex Obsessions They have little to do with the standard procreative urge, Mr. Crumb admits. He has also said he finds nothing more boring than someone else’s sexual obsessions, and yet through his long career the world’s most famous underground cartoonist has felt compelled to include his own sex fantasies in his art. He explains it as a compulsive catharsis, while fans call R. Crumb’s erotic fantasies the Master at his best.

America Swings, Naomi Harris To penetrate the world of middle class mate-swapping she had to join them, often working in just shoes and a tool belt to hold her camera gear. Her extreme technique worked so well that in 48 months she was able to photograph 38 parties, crisscrossing the country from Mahwah, New Jersey, to Pleasanton, California; from Big Lake, Minnesota, to Washington, Texas. Her subjects are not the usual perfected androids who populate contemporary erotica, but ordinary people with extraordinary sex lives, including multi-orgasmic schoolteachers, polyamorous nurses, bi-sexual senior citizens and the Mandingos, a group of African-American men who service white wives.

Action, Richard Kern Richard Kern likes real women: unpretentious, unadorned, and definitely undressed. Those who love Kern know each book is an invitation to join him in his privileged world where natural young women share their most intimate moments. Richard has never lost his boyish curiosity with girls and their secrets, so instead of posing them in sterile sets he follows them through the house—or rather his New York apartment—from backyard to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, capturing every sexy and embarrassing moment.

Fetish Girls, Eric Kroll Eric Kroll has a ‘profound love for the diversity of fetish’, and has done much to encourage newcomers to this field as well as to inspire them with his camera work. "It is the game of pleasure that I seek on film. Don't come naked to me. Come with attitude and kneel or stand above me. My audience is particular, born as it were, from Fetish Girls."