Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 7: The Body in Photography, 1997

 Muybridge - Woman turning in surprise, running away

Where the portrait is ambiguous, Clarke finds the nude contentious.  This is, he says, because much of the way bodies are viewed is based on social construct.  This doesn't seem to say very much since very little of what we view or know is not understood through social construct.  His point seems to be that ideas of sexuality, identity and gender influence how nude bodies are photographically portrayed. 

Early photographers borrowed from painting in producing images of the female form as types - supine, demure, unindividuated stereotypes.  Clarke notes that typically classical nudes, as representations of the real, were promises of the actual, promises that were made possible by the invention of the camera.  Our earliest pornographic images date from the 1840s, suggesting the immediacy with which some understood the potential of the camera.  To fully understand photography of the nude, Clarke observes (I believe rightly), we have to understand the nature of the male gaze.   Clarke concludes by offering examples of several contemporary artists challenging our stereotypes and investigating the nature of gaze, including Jo Spence's photographs of her breast cancer surgery, Cindy Sherman's cartoon mannequin with exaggerated sexual organs, Hans Bellmer’s disjointed and disfigured puppet, and Annette Messager’s mobile of body parts.

Except for a one-sentence reference to pornogrpahy, no effort is made to trace the effects of this practice on nude photography, or photography in general.  Clarke also ignores medical photography, surely an important school with it's own history and traditions. 

Among the problematic examples in this chapter, Clarke compares Muybridge’s studies of male and female anatomy in motion, but only the male figures are included.  An anonymous photograph from Picture Post magazine is said to be self-referential, but the photo within the photo which makes this obvious is not clearly visible as reproduced (and might even be cropped). 

Clarke also makes assertions about photos that simply aren't obvious.  His claim that in Stiegltiz's photographs of O’Keeffe that she "determines the frame of reference" and will not be viewed as an object, but as a "woman," is not demonstrable given the one photograph presented here, a black and white of her bare torso.   Of Minor White's “Portland” (below) he claims "the photograph asserts the physical presence of the individual," but this is not at all clear.  It could as easily be a type.  Nothing in the photo that suggests individuation.