Vintage Nude Photos On Display In Berlin’s Photography Museum


The Museum of Photography in Berlin has just opened an exhibition of nude photos from the turn of the last century.

“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” brings together hundreds of nude photos from an era we normally associate with old-fashioned prudery. In fact, nude photos were incredibly popular at that time. They had existed since the earliest days of the medium, and by the 1880s it was getting much cheaper to reproduce photographs. This led to a boom in the distribution of all photos, nudes included.

Soon nudity could be seen in magazines, advertising, postcards, collectible cards found in cigarette packs and large-format posters. The exhibition looks at a range of different styles and purposes of nudes, ranging from artistic studies to the blatantly pornographic. Rural images and scenes from Classical myths were also popular, as were photos of the nudist movement, which was seeing its first wave of popularity at this time.

%Gallery-187444%The explosion in nudes led to society questioning their traditional assumptions. The marks that corsets left on the flesh made some question whether they should be worn. Homoerotica became more widespread and the first homoerotic magazine, Der Eigene, started in 1896 and published many male nudes.

People who wanted to buy or sell nude photos had to skirt the law. By dubbing the images “for artistic purposes only,” they could claim their interest wasn’t prurient, a bit like how head shops nowadays label bongs “for tobacco use only.” The police did make frequent busts, and one of the largest collections of nude photos from this era is housed at the Police Museum of Lower Saxony, which supplied many of the more risqué photos for this exhibition.

Then as now, there was a continuous debate over what was or was not obscene. Simple nudes were generally considered acceptable, especially if they were artistic studies or images of “primitive” peoples. Surprisingly, images of nude children were also more acceptable than today since they were considered images of innocence. While some child nudes are on display at the museum, none appear in this article.

“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” runs until August 25.

[Photo copyright Heinrich Kühn, copyright Estate of the Artist / Galerie Kicken Berlin]

Spanish flight attendants produce nude calendar to publicize bankruptcy

When the going gets tough, the tough get…naked.

The cabin crew of Air Comet, a Spanish airline, have come up with a creative way to draw attention to the company’s recent bankruptcy: a nude calendar. Air Comet isn’t the first European airline to have pulled this kind of stunt; Ryanair and Viva Aerobus have also produced more SFW versions.

Through saucy photos that lend further credence to the “sexy stew” image, the female flight attendants are hoping to generate publicity about the 600-cabin crew members’ nine months of lost wages. They also hope to earn enough to fund their legal battle against Air Comet.

Photo spreads feature the fetching flight attendants in various flight-related poses, including one of a nude woman stretched across a jet engine, clad only in an emergency flotation vest.

This is not the first time Air Comet’s “air hostesses” have used their bodies to political effect. Last February, one woman conducted a naked interview in which she vented her anger at the company’s president. How very…Euro.

[Via www.eturbonews.com]

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