Studio Nudes

Erotic photographs were shot in a variety of locations in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The most common settings for 1950s stripset nudes were a hotel or motel room, outdoors, and a studio. The studio in 1950s photographs doesn’t call attention to itself. There are not typical studio props or backgrounds which are found in earlier studio photographs. Studio props include columns, corrugated backgrounds, drapery, and so forth which are most common in earlier studio photographs and are used to enhance lighting effects.

I always associate studio nudes like this with those taken in the 1930s and 1940s but I think this model’s photos were taken in the 1950s. What caught my eye when these photos became available was the model’s relaxed poses and the lighting.


John Willie’s Alice

John Willie produced a single set of 12 photographs of the model he called Alice shot in 1960. Changes in room arrangement/furniture sometimes help to date Willie photographs. In the first two photographs below, to the left of the model there is a small table with a lamp and behind that is a white drop-leaf table. Compare the same corner of the room shown in the earlier photo of June shot in 1958.

The collection includes a four-up print.

Klaw’s Female Impersonator Series

Irving Klaw produced a series of photographs called the Female Impersonators. The photo numbers were preceded with FI. These photographs have a prominent place in the early 1950s catalogs produced by Klaw but I almost never come across them for sale online. Below are 3; their numbers give an idea of just how many individual posed photographs were available in this series.


The Candle Strip Set

These photos are part of a circa 1950 strip set where there is a lit candle in most of the images. The engaging poses and imaginative photography are unusual for this kind of photo series.


Little Nicki

People who purchased nude, pinup and fetish photographs sometimes just dumped the pictures in a shoe or cigar box. Others organized photos in albums. This postcard was mounted on a piece of black cardboard and bands from cigars have been pasted to provide a title and a little more with the reference as to price. The postcard is from circa 1920.