PHOTOGRAPHY IN BRIEF : THE HOMOEROTIC PHOTOGRAPH Male Images From Durieu/ Delacroix to Mapplethorpe <i> By Allen Ellenzweig (Columbia University Press: $44.95; 230 pp.) </i>

This book begins with Mapplethorpe (who took the photograph on the cover) and travels backwards, excavating a hidden history that begins in the 1850s with male nudes shot by French photographer Eugene Durieu under the direction of Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix, who used the images for studies for his paintings. From there the book goes on to explore homoerotic work by several critically acclaimed gay photographers (including Herbert List, George Platt Lynes and Minor White) and strong bodies of work by relative unknowns (among them F. Holland Day, David Lebe and Keith Smith) along with a few surprising inclusions (Thomas Eakins, Eadweard Muybridge and Brassai). Allen Ellenzweig’s long, thorough text is a model of scholarship that succeeds in interweaving the evolution of gay culture and how it related to changes in the culture at large, with art history.