Dull Tool Dim Bulb: photography history

Showing posts with label photography history. Show all posts

Schicklgruber on the Run Carnival Novelty Backdrop Photograph circa 1944 collection Jim Linderman

Anyone can join in the war effort with this painted novelty photographer backdrop (actually a foreground.) Anonymous photograph Circa 1944 collection Jim Linderman
You may wish to preview two related books I have published, linked below. Ebook versions are only $5.99. Thanks! Jim.

Comic Foreground Novelty Photographs from Argentina ARGENTINA TINTAMARRESQUE EBOOK $5.99
FREE PREVIEW AND ORDERS HERE

Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860 - 1920 THE PAINTED BACKDROP
EBOOK $5.99
FREE PREVIEW AND ORDERS 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

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
3. Images are of lower resolution than the original. The image is not used here for profit.

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Any Trademarks used in this item listing are used for strictly descriptive purposes only. No association or endorsement is implied or inferred. No character or trademark ownership is given or implied.

If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com

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Schicklgruber on the Run Carnival Novelty Backdrop Photograph circa 1944 collection Jim Linderman

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

Proto-Porn from the 1950S

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