Harlem History and Tan Pin Ups Teena, Vera and Dolores

One of the earliest significant ads I can find in a mass market periodical offering nude photographs of African-American women.

(Or even women of color...)

From a 1956 issue of Frolic Magazine.  Scarce today, Frolic was printed on cheap pulp but the covers were bright and vibrant to stand out on the top shelf of shops.  In 1956 the magazine was published every two months with Luke Bailey as editor.  Harlem was about 100 blocks north of the editorial offices.

The photo sets offered here were common in the day, but to cater to a race market was not.  Mar-Mays photos MAY be yet another "branch" of the enormous "Marr" or "Marno" distributor of countless figure study digests documented as well as can be in the book 
PROTO-PORN: The Art Figure Study Scam of the 1950s.

The ad here ran four years after African-American photographer Cass Carr was arrested for organizing nude camera shots which used ethnic models...and Bettie Page.  Carr was a pioneer of sorts and lived in Harlem.  His studio was shut down by police as reported in Jet Magazine in 1952.  It is likely the photographs above came from informal (or even illegal) amateur camera club models such as those used by Carr.

Ads from Frolic Magazine 1956  Text by Jim Linderman

Randal Levenson Photographer sends information on Cass Carr, Harlem Photographer and Bettie Page Promoter

Photograph copyright Randal Levenson No Reproduction without artist's permission

Master Photographer Randal Levenson was kind enough to get in touch and reveal some previously unknown information about Bettie Page photographer (and organizer of the infamous Camera Club outings in which she was discovered) Cass Carr.  As it has been well over 50 years now, and new information on early African-American photographers of the 1950s  (much less one central to Bettie Page's career)  is increasingly scarce and valued by scholars, I'm happy to share this snippet from Mr. Levenson...as well as crib one of his astounding photos.

"Re Camera Club Girls, I knew Cass Carr when he lived in the cellar of a building off 5th Ave in NYC and made his living buying GSA-auctioned photo equipment in DC and bringing it back to his cellar quarters, cramming the stuff in as best as possible and selling the stuff to eccentrics who would clamber all over it, looking for a 'find'. The place was also a sort of clubhouse for old timer photographers.  I made the DC trip myself a couple of times."

My book on Cass Carr and his Camera Club Outings is Here.

Randall Levenson is himself the outstanding photographer responsible for In Search of the Monkey Girl which was published by Aperture.  Levenson's work is represented by Joseph Bellows Gallery and Robert Klein Gallery. He further reports his current project is "chasing snake-handling ministers, chicken fighters, moonshiners and loggers in Tennesee, Alabama and Georgia." so I'd say much good work is forthcoming. 
 
The artist's website is HERE

Article "Proto-Porn from the 1950s" by Jim Linderman

NOTE: The following is an article I wrote which was just published at Sugarcut Magazine. Sugarcut is THE premier erotic art and photography site, and I thought some of the camera and visual arts folks who follow Dull Tool Dim Bulb might enjoy seeing it without clicking onto a NSFW site! If you DO want to see the original article on Sugarcut, you can find it, and it has 25 illustrations in a slide show.

Proto-Porn from the 1950S

By Jim Linderman

6 March 2012

Shown is a wide-angle lens full of vintage camera club pinup digests from the early 1950s. Long ignored progenitors of pinup pulchitrude! It was illegal to sell nude photographs in the Eisenhower days, but some enterprising and greedy shutterbug gahoots found a way around the law, frequently in cahoots with the guys downtown, if you know what I mean.

“Figure Study” publications for the artist and photographer!

These obscure digests were all purportedly aimed at the burgeoning nude photography hobbyist, or at least they claimed to be. They were available under the counter or through the mail, at least until Uncle Sam got wise. The models, some famous (Blaze Starr, Judy O’Neal, Bettie Page and many more) were pulled from burlesque routes and strip clubs…others were amateurs who replied to ads. There are no less than five devoted to Ms. Page alone from various publishers. All are hard to find today. Each is now over 50 years old… and since they were published in small editions by phony companies, then carried by trunk and hand to the shop, few survive today. Many have no return address or date. Shop owners priced them at what they thought the risk was worth.

The models in these “proto-porn” periodicals never had pudenda or pubes. The photographs were black and white, and each digest-sized booklet ran from 20 to 50 pages. The colorful covers belie the blurry pages inside. The men behind the camera were seldom identified, but with care and a loupe, one can often identify the photographer’s swinging pads from the wall decorations and curtain designs.

Who was responsible for these stroke books masquerading as figure studies for photographers? At least one series was produced by a later prominent publisher of fetish pinup periodicals. Others came from a husband and wife team living in Midtown Manhattan a few doors down from Bettie Page, and a big load from a mysterious photographer with a Florida address…a sunny address he began using after apparently thinking the city up north was “too hot” and left Brooklyn behind. Nearly all were published in series, but a complete set is unheard of.

The books are today relics of days gone by. Despite history books which credit Hugh Hefner with starting the modern revolution in nude photography, not to mention sexual mores, it was a dozen independent small presses with moxie (and buxie) with a few mob-connections who got the balls rolling.

Jim Linderman is an author, collector and editor of the daily blog VINTAGE SLEAZE. This group of original “Figure Study” digests come from the author’s collection and date circa 1950 – 1955. Vintage Sleaze the daily blog is HERE.

Vintage Sleaze

Promote Your Page Too

Weegee the Technical Assistant 1956 Photographers Showplace Magazine

The Weegee show "Murder is my Business" at the International Center of Photography in New York is certainly a must see, and I thought I would post a little Weegee curiosity to celebrate it. While Weegee is often thought of and portrayed as something of a lone wolf prowling the streets at night with his camera, which is certainly true, he was also a social creature active and involved with the photographic community. He participated in social camera club shoots and had friends who did the same. In addition to the crime and nightlife scenes in the ICP show, he had a successful active and creative role in the places you might not think...including this unusual gig as "technical assistant" to a most unusual photo layout in Photographers Showplace magazine in the December 1956 issue.

Photographer's Showplace was by far one of the most interesting periodicals for the photographic community at the time, it had models and nudes, but was actually serious about it, unlike the large number of "under the counter" publications claiming to be "figure studies" but which were little more than soft-core pornography skirting the law. It was also entertaining without being too technical...serious about the emerging art and craft of modern photography, but light on the jargon.

Here are bits from a painterly picture set. As you see Weegee is credited as "Technical Assistant" although his precise role is not described. Certainly he checked his light meter! Maybe he found the model (identified as Rae Chandler) The artist (the one with the brush) is Ralph Therrien, and the photographer is James Pappas. An unusual collaboration of painting and photography from a time when both arts were experimenting. The layout is extensive, no less than 12 photos are presented, several full-page and in color.

Interestingly, the same issue has a full page spread which claims to be the first published example of Weegee's unusual photographic experiments, abstractions which are referred to as the "Weegeerama Kaleidescope" which is a post for another day.

Though a big fan, I have posted only once here about Weegee, but had fun putting it together. Revisit my piece on the relationship between the photographer and the pin up girl Bettie Page HERE which I am still grateful for being allowed by the ICP to use images from their collection to illustrate.

Images from Photographers Showplace Magazine December 1956, Creative Publications. Collection Jim Linderman

The Most Beautiful African-American Model of the 1950s ? Lost and Forgotten Cheesecake Pinup of Color

She appears on the cover of "Tawny Models" in the early 1950s, a smut digest pretending to be "figure studies for artists" to avoid censors. She appears in 4" x 5" photo sets sold from the back of magazines...and was photographed at the same sessions which produced the most famous pinup model of all, Bettie Page.

Fifty years later, she appears on the cover of my book which could tell the story of every African-American model trying to find a place in front of the camera during the second half of the 20th century. She likely faced racism, prejudice...and as was the case for all nude models during the time, she may have faced arrest and prosecution. Today no one knows who this young African-American model and pioneer was.

"Tawny Models" though undated, was published between 1950 and 1955 with a Miami, Florida address, but that could be a mail drop or a ruse, as nearly identical booklets appear with New York addresses at the same time. Nude photographs were sold under the counter and by mail at the time, and arrests were common. "Tawny Models" was part of a large group of picture only "Art Study" booklets by a largely unknown photographer going under the pseudonym of Marno. "Marno the Photographer" actually, but he had other names too.

Likewise, the color picture here (color only because the photographer tinted the original by hand) was taken around 1955. The undated "stag picture" with the other models would have been sold as a "strip-set" of 8 depicting clothes being removed. There is no documentation available.

Light-skinned, short natural hair...the photographs, while cropped here for discretion, could have been taken then or now. Just one of the thousands of models who worked for five bucks a session, now lost, and always anonymous. Something of a rebel in a field which seldom took note of African-American beauty. This model who today would be called "a fresh face" would likely be well into her 70s, but since the racket was tough she might not be around at all.

Tawny Models Camera Digest circa 1950 Photographs by "Marno" and Hand-Tinted photograph by Rudolph Rossi circa 1955, Collection Jim Linderman

Additional, un-cropped and uncensored photographs of the model appear on the "adult only" website Camera Club Girls HERE