The first plate in the 1955 edition of Photograms of the Year is this photo of Suse Pressier by S Enkelman, Elsewhere the usual collection of close ups of faces in grotesque detail are still popular as are studies of young children we might consider ill-advised today though clearly popular not just in this annual publication but in all manner of photographic magazines and books of the time.
The Regents Canal by Alvin L Coburn is clearly inspired by pictorialism and could easily be mistaken for something produced in the early twentieth century.
Minimalism is also represented, for instance in Mist Morning by Chi-Wei Chang.
Of course female beauty is well represented and these portraits of Audrey Hepburn by Cecil Beaton and Serena by Thomas Petroff are portraits of the type we still see today.
When it comes to nudes, and what we would probably classify as “art nudes” these days, we see the influence of classical painting in Nymph by Walter Bird and Grecian Nocturne by Harold Kells. Nymph could easily pass as a study for a Russell Flint watercolour. Flint, who died in 1969, was himself influenced by classical paintings. Grecian Nocturne on the other hand might be seen as influenced by the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
And finally we might want to reflect on when art nude becomes merely cheesecake. This Nude Study by W Mortensen seems to me to be more cheesecake than art, not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that but that depends where you stand as regards the “Male Gaze.”
