Badrabbit's Journal

Floral Backgrounds

Photography
December 21, 2023

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.

East Coast West Coast 1920s Photos

Photography

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.

Named Guyette Models

Charles Guyette | Vintage
May 22, 2023

Along with being the best introduction to the subject, Charles Guyette: Godfather of American Fetish Art by Richard Pérez Seves provides identification of several Guyette models. I’m going to amplify that identification a little here.

Jane High was a Guyette model who had a small number of her Guyette photos reprinted by Irving Klaw with her name. From the costuming it appears that she was a burlesque artist.

More is known about another model, Jacqueline Joyce, also a burlesque performer. She was born in Toronto and moved to New York City to advance her career. According the 1937 Picture Review which featured her on its cover, she was performing at that time at Mario’s Club Mirador on 52nd Street. She was five foot three inches and weighed 108 pounds according to Picture Review. Her career as a performer extended at least until the early 1950s. The first illustration below is from the cover of Picture Review. The second illustration is her appearance on the 1941 cover of Jest magazine.

Around 1930

Photography

Around 1930 in Europe postcards where being created in huge quantities. Biederer Studio was one creator producing postcards and other sized photographs in a wide range from purely pornographic to purely cheesecake. This is an upskirt photo that is postcard size but without the postcard back.

Around 1930 in America women inspired by Amelia Earhart were wearing leather jackets styled after flying jackets. This is a photograph of a young woman wearing an aviatrix costume. The cap makes her look like an actual pilot but this may have more a costume for her.

Burlesque Style Photographs

Vintage

I tend to think of vintage photographs of women as falling in one of several genres. There’s the pinup. There’s the nude. And somewhere in between is the burlesque style photograph which can have a little of both genres. There is usually a performative aspect to these three genres. What keeps a burlesque style photograph from being a plain nude photograph is the element of costuming. An element of nudity keeps the photograph from being purely a pinup. Here are three examples of burlesque styling.

The first photograph is a 4×5 inch print and is pure burlesque styling. The second photograph, also a 4×5 inch print, is a pinup with burlesque styling. The first two photographs where probably shot around 1950. The third photograph is earlier, 1940s, and is a 3.5×5.5 inch print. The setting of this photograph is similar to some Guyette photographs, bare wall background, a piece of cloth covering the floor. This isn’t a Guyette photograph but shows that at least some of his photographs fall within an existing sensibility.