Maud d'Orby by Jean Agelou

Jean Agelou was a Parisian photographer that produced 'risque' postcards around 1900-1917. I came across his work while researching my earlier post on vintage erotic photography. He remains a little unusual in that most of his existing photographs features favoured model 'Fernande'. This is not her...

Maud d'Orby was an operatic soprano that did a few sessions with Agelou. Opera is my least favourite form of music, but if there were more Mauds around I might take an interest...

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons...

Norma Shearer

I don't know a whole lot about Norma Shearer, who made films from the early Twenties through to the early Forties. A bit before my time I am glad to say! But I came across a book on her in a local Op Shop thinking one day I might be able to use bits of it in a montage. A couple of images, the first a very contrived studio publicity shot from 1925, and two stills from the 1924 film Empty Hands. It would appear from the book that this was about as sexy as Norma was ever going to get, but I wanted to share with you a few lines from a review written about this film by Morduant Hall in the New York Times the same year the film was released:

"Miss Shearer's eyes are really beautiful, and, as her hair is not curled according to movie fashion, she is quite pleasing in this film. She seems to be a good swimmer when in the water and is evidently conscious that her ankles are by no means ungainly. Her eyebrows deserved at least two words of praise".

Good on you Mordy! They don't review like that any more...but remember that the 'talkies' didn't start til 1927, so we can allow some latitude here (maybe)...

Extase

Ecstasy was made in Czechoslovakia by director Gustav Machaty in 1933. It starred a young actress called Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, later to become Hedy Lamarr in Hollywood. The film is perhaps best known for it's nude scene, and while not the first film to show nudity, it is considered the first to depict intercourse and a woman having an orgasm. During the early days of censorship in American film it was banned for "violation of the Production Code. This violation is suggested by the basic story...in that it is a [story] of illicit love and frustrated sex, treated in detail without sufficient compensating moral values..."

The reality is that it is one of the most moral tales imaginable, and by today's standards far from explicit. But that is not why I am writing this. Having recently watched the film again it struck me that is a masterful lesson in film making. Virtually a silent movie, every frame is there for a purpose and that is to tell the story. It is beautifully written, paced, lit and acted. A wonderful example of how simplicity of approach can still be capable of expressing the most complex of human emotions...

When did you last have an orgasm?

Various locations, Bega, New South Wales, Australia, 22 August 2012...

Ecstasy

Part two of the Bega deconstructed project...

Bob Georgeson, Ecstasy, 2012, Video projection, Woolworth's complex, Bega.

Marilyn Monroe by Cecil Beaton

To commemorate Marilyn's birthday 1 June 1926. A truly great photograph shot at that split second where reality intersects with glamour. 

Marilyn Monroe by Cecil Beaton, New York, 1956