Nude

Nude is the third of Ren Hang's self-published photo books, issued in Beijing in 2012 in a first edition of 500 numbered copies. Where New Love and Athens Love mix diaristic snapshots with occasional nudes, this one narrows the focus entirely: 98 full-page color photographs of a small circle of friends and collaborators, shot without the wider settings that soften his later work.

The pictures are more explicit and more openly staged than in Hang's subsequent books, often strange in composition and untroubled by conventional ideas of modesty. Flat color, tight framing, and a deadpan sense of humor, the traits that would carry through his career, are already fully formed here.

Hang self-published his early books in small numbered runs and sold them directly, a practice he kept up even after international galleries began showing his work. He died in February 2017 at 29; surviving copies of Nude are scarce.