The advent and popularization of photography in the 19th century forever changed the way we look at the body. Instead of built-up brushstrokes, the black-and-white grain of film began to articulate the curves and angles of the human form. The mechanized process of photography promised greater fealty to corporeal truth than the painter’s hand, and easily reproducible images distributed carnal pleasures more simply and quickly than any canvas or print could.

Louis Daguerre Although scientists created various photographic methods in the early 1800s, scholars often note 1839 as the inception of the medium. That year,introduced the world to his daguerreotype, the first commercially viable photographic process. It was only a matter of time before photographers—especially the French, lascivious as any historical group, but less sexually repressed than their Victorian-era British counterparts—began snapping and circulating images of nude women.