What makes a male nude romantic, as opposed to merely erotic? The more obvious attributes might be soft focus, soft lighting, silk bedding, sylvan settings, roses, lace curtains, moonlight. Perhaps it is the look of a model, or the expression on his face; maybe it is the warmth of the embrace between two lovers, or the longing in a young man's eyes.

Each of the images in this book, the first anthology to bring together a group of celebrated photographers to thematically celebrate romance in the male nude, stirs the imagination to create a story around it—a story of youthful yearning or an idyllic day, a story about the blossoming love between two men, or even about the rapport between a photographer and his model.

The photographers represented here—among them Reed Massengill, Kobi Israel, Tom Bianchi, Ed Freeman, David Vance, and Michael Childers—live and work in places as disparate as Israel, Guatemala, England, Cuba, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, Greece, Sweden, and Germany, in addition to the United States. Their diversity proves that romanticism flourishes everywhere in the world.