Tuesday, September 23, 2014

"Figure Studies"

The February 1970 issue of Modern Photography Vol. 34 #2 has a dandy assortment of adverts in the back pages offering fabulous, magnificent, exotic, alluring, and glamorous mail order "figure studies." And what better subject, I ask, is there for serious, artistic / photographic study? Indeed! Printed stills, slides, 8mm film, --why, figures even come on a 2 x 3 foot poster if I so desire!

Time to get studying!









6 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

Beats Muybridge!

Mr. Karswell said...

for the connoisseur!

Craftypants Carol said...

a connoisseur of pictures that someone else took!

Mr. Cavin said...

It's an interesting business model. You pay a model for a session, and then sell the negatives off to other people so they can practice printing them. It's like getting money for nothing, for looking at girls. Pretty brilliant.

I love tiny halftoned photos.

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian Barnes said...

This is basically using the same trick that nudie cutie producers did in the early days when any nudity was prohibited but you could show "documentaries." The solutions? Lots of documentaries about nudist resorts, or exposes about the danger of nudist resorts, or just lots of people playing tennis topless.

I suspect we are looking at the same trick here. "Art studies" is one obvious way to get around anti-porn people, and for sure selling as negatives is probably getting around some sort of mail regulations.