NEW YORK — “The Pin-Up Mystery of 1950," a collection of over 100 nude photographs of women taken in 1950, has recently been published by Asylum. The company specializes in works featuring illustrators, designers, writers, musicians and pop counterculture.
Edited by Helen Thorne and Gordon Eriksen, the book centers on the surprise discovery of a mysterious collection of photographs taken over seven decades ago that have never before been shown publicly.
“This treasury of pin-ups gives us a unique look at the women in the year 1950, but the mystery of why they were locked away all these decades and who they are remains,” Thorne said.
Negatives of the photos were found in a mid-century steamer trunk at an estate sale on Long Island, New York, where it had remained untouched for 70 years. The names of the photographer and of the women featured in the book are unknown.
Another element of this mystery is how “an unknown amateur photographer, possibly in the pursuit of becoming a pin-up photographer, was able to persuade a group of women who could have been bookkeepers, sales ladies, actresses, or homemakers into posing nude for him or her. Who were these women?” Eriksen asks. “Who was the photographer? What does it tell us about how women saw themselves in the beginning of that memorable decade — the ‘50s?”
More information about this book can be found here.
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