With Child

Doctor turned photographer Schatz celebrates the pregnant female nude in these images rippling with romanticism, abstraction, and movement. In one image, he uses light to highlight the upward curve of a thigh, shoulder, and hand. In another, dramatic cropping evokes an abstraction of rounded shapes: hair, breasts, bellies, thighs. A series of photos features dancers, in toe-shoes, achieving a delicate, curvaceous balance. The pregnant body takes prominence, but Schatz also invited his subjects to return with their children a few weeks after birth—and these aren’t your usual cutesy baby photos. The babies are strong, vibrant creatures searching for and clinging to the warmth of human contact. In her foreword Goldberg (Photography in Print) describes Schatz’s portraits as “strong, decidedly unsentimental images,” and these photographs, intimate but never cloying, celebrate the organic and ever-changing human form. (Nov.)