Lauren Lavelle was a popular model in the late 1940s into the 1950s. Her real name was Lauren Duncan and she also modeled under the name of Lauren Hastings. I have parts of two separate strip set photos from the 1950s that I am posting here. These are all 4×5 inch prints.
These photos were taken in the 1950s by the a bondage/kink photographer whose photos often show the shadow of a well wheel in the background. I have photos from what must have been a large number of sets, usually only one or a couple of photos belonging to a set. The exception is the group that follows. These are all 4×5 inch prints. The originals were not numbered, though I have numbered reprints made not long after the originals were shot.
The last photo shows more of the studio setting and has the well wheel hanging from a post on the upper right of the image. Part of the studio lighting and stand can be seen to the left.
I am posting a group of photographs that appear to be 1950s reprints of earlier photographs. These have a number for the set and I have a scattering of other photographs that are reprints with the same apparent vintage and numbering style. I think these were reprinted and sold by Gargoyle, a Leonard Burtman offshoot that operated in the late 1950s. There is nothing behind the belief other than these are reprints and there was a company called Gargoyle and they might have created and sold the reprints.
When these photographs were created they weren’t copyrighted. Charles Guyette photos weren’t copyrighted and reprints were sold by Irving Klaw (whose early photographs weren’t copyrighted either) and originals were used as illustrations in Burtman’s magazines such as Exotique. John Willie’s photographs were not copyrighted either.
Anyway, here are the photographs. The prints are on 4×5 inch paper but the images are narrower and originally were on a different size paper. There are three groups: bound dress model, bound swimsuit model, and single photo from a different shoot.
When I first began buying John Willie LA bondage photographs the key for me was the backgrounds. A certain background would let me know that was a John Willie photo. After a while I became familiar with the models and Willie’s bondage style and key indicators for a Willie photo expanded. There was a distinctive background for strip set photographs that caught my attention. At first I’d find a photo here or there and purchase it if I could. At a certain point I found a complete strip set group of 12 4×5 inch photos. I believe these photographs were shot in a burlesque theater around 1950.
Our grandson came to visit this last weekend, the first visit here since before covid. He’s six and he’s very proud of that fact.
The daughter and her wife had two sons that they raised. One son was an officer in the Army and fought Isis in Iraq. The younger soon is married and his wife just had their first son. Once the boys were out of the house the daughter and her wife decided to adopt a third and he’s the six-year-old who visited.
I set up an iPhone on a tripod and passed the clicker for taking photos to the boy. My partner and I were at his sides, kneeling. He stood and we talked and laughed and he clicked the shutter. At one point I turned to my partner and said, “You didn’t see this, did you, when your mom took us to Fort Ancient?”
That visit was in 1970, weeks after the daughter’s birth and after a bad fall which left the woman who would become my partner in a coma for days. My best friend suggested we see them and we drove from the east coast in a roundabout trip to college.
We had a good visit which included being driven to the earthworks at Fort Ancient in southwest Ohio. Driving back at night the sky lit up with heat lightning, the first I’d seen. My best friend took a photo of the new mom and me there and we’re both grinning.
We have history that goes back years. We are old enough to know that one of these days we’ll leave the stage of history. We also know that the past holds the present in a firm grip. I grew up in the Jim Crow south and remember seeing Whites Only signs. This was also the era of duck and cover, school kids under their desks with their hands covering their vulnerable necks during a nuclear attack. After leaving the new mother and daughter, back on the highway to college, my best friend and I passed a large billboard proclaiming, Welcome to Klan Country.
The grandboy is African American. He’s bright, sweet, shy, and friendly. One of our fears is that the terrible history of the United States may have already doomed him.