This print popped up on EBay recently and captured my eye. It has much of the feel of a Guyette photo but isn’t a Guyette photo. The model’s costuming and pose are subtle. The table she is sitting on doesn’t appear in Guyette photographs that I have seen. If she were costumed just a little differently . . . Anyway, the photograph appears to have been taken in the 1930s. The print is 7.5×12.4 cm in size with borders.
Photography is much more than just taking a picture. The lens doesn’t just see what is before it. This is especially true for film photography. What a camera does is capture reflected light. Studio lighting allows the photographer to play with reflected light. This small group of 8×10 inch prints shows what can be done.
This photo was taken around 1950, maybe a little earlier. The lighting brings out the melody of textures. This looks like a Hollywood promotional photograph but there is nothing on the back of the print to indicate its purpose.
This and the next photo are of band leader Jeanne Carroll. The photos were taken in the 1950s and were used to promote the band/conductor. The photographer’s name isn’t clear but appears to be Maurice Seymour of Chicago. Compared to the first picture, this photo is a sharp contrast of black and white with fewer middle tones.
A portrait requires less sharp contrast where light is used to model the forms creating a three dimensional representation.
This is an Irving Klaw reprint of one of John Willie’s photographs taken in Australia before Willie moved to the United States in 1946. These early photographs tend to be more formal than his later work.
The photograph was taken in around 1940 and the print size is Klaw’s standard 4×5 inches.
Floral backgrounds were sometimes used for backgrounds for female nudes in the 1940s. Most studio photographs in the same period had austere or formal backgrounds. The floral backgrounds for these photographs lends an air of the exotic.
This photograph is circa 1940 and when one pops up in the marketplace it is often associated with WWII vintage uniforms and other personal items from former Navy personnel. The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii by Beth Bailey and David Farber has a photo of service members looking at nude photos in a Hotel Street shop. This part of Honolulu was the brothel district. Women in the brothels were expected to have sex with at least a hundred men a day, if the three minutes allotted for each john can be called sex. The image size is 7.2×11 cm.
A postcard postmarked 1940 with a model and floral background. United States.
A slightly out of focus amateur pinup with the woman posed in front of a floral print bedspread. 1940s, United States, 6×9 cm image size. The best amateur photos of this sort were taken by Eugene von Bruenchenhein, a Wisconsin folk artist, whose prints of shots, some nude, of his wife with floral backgrounds are highly sought after.
My collecting focuses on photographs taken after 1930 in the United States. Earlier photographs taken on the east and west coasts have a special quality in that many were taken outdoors. Many of these photographs of female models follow tropes found in art. These photographs were not reproduced in vast quantities like the female nude photographs taken in the 1950s.
Outdoor nude postcards, New York, circa 1920. I wish I knew more about AAB Company and the creators of their postcards. Similar style photographs were produced in California by Alta Studios.
Arts Beautiful magazine, 1920s. This is packed away and all I have readily available is the scan of the cover and one interior page. The cover is possibly an Alta Studios photograph. The interior photograph is Alta Studios of California.
Mack Sennett postcards, Los Angeles, circa 1917. Sennett is an important early film maker. I am not sure if she is one of his bathing beauties from his popular film shorts or if this scene and actress is associated with one of his feature films.