Showcasing vintage male photography, mostly nude. You must be 18 years of age or older to visit this blog! If you hold a copyright on any material shown on this blog, notify me, and it will be removed immediately.
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Monday, October 28, 2024
Boot Camp
Mark Kaufmann took this photo at a U.S. Marine boot camp in 1951.
I'm no longer surprised at seeing groups of men casually naked together, but what I've never been able to understand is why LIFE and other sources were documenting it as much as they did.
In 1951, could they have published a photo like this with pubes and genitals visible here and there in the lineup?
No, they would not have published anything of this sort. The subjects of the LIFE nude photos were told that their privates would be cropped out of anything published. That was true as far as things went back then, but what no one knew was that the original uncropped versions were kept in an archive that appeard over 50 years later on a thing called the internet.
You can see many more photos from Mark Kauffman's Marine Boot Camp photo shoot on my blog here: https://unashamedmale.blogspot.com/2023/03/vintage-military-part-38.html
Many thanks to the pointer to the "part 38" link (and in it, there is a link on how to search the life archives). In today's digital world, when not doing a still portrait , you tend to take many shots and choose the good one. Not sure how this translated to the analogue film (expensive), but when you are documenting a "moving line", you can't ask all the men to stand still, lower a bit, shift to the right etc to make sure you don't capture any naughty bits. There are also fleeting moments ("at attention !") where you don't have time to properly crop the camera and will crop it later. From the military's point of view, I think there was laso a conscious effort to force new inductees to drop any acquired cultural shyness right off the bat in a more dramatic way so that they later don't have problems with communal showers, tight living corners. And it is also a way to impose obediance to orders right from the stat. It may not necessarily mean that the young men would have been comfortable at school doing the same, but when faces with the military discipline, they had no choice and had to comply.
I'm no longer surprised at seeing groups of men casually naked together, but what I've never been able to understand is why LIFE and other sources were documenting it as much as they did.
ReplyDeleteIn 1951, could they have published a photo like this with pubes and genitals visible here and there in the lineup?
-- hsc
No, they would not have published anything of this sort. The subjects of the LIFE nude photos were told that their privates would be cropped out of anything published. That was true as far as things went back then, but what no one knew was that the original uncropped versions were kept in an archive that appeard over 50 years later on a thing called the internet.
DeleteYou can see many more photos from Mark Kauffman's Marine Boot Camp photo shoot on my blog here: https://unashamedmale.blogspot.com/2023/03/vintage-military-part-38.html
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend cutting and pasting the link in this comment. It's a very good photo set.
DeleteMany thanks to the pointer to the "part 38" link (and in it, there is a link on how to search the life archives). In today's digital world, when not doing a still portrait , you tend to take many shots and choose the good one. Not sure how this translated to the analogue film (expensive), but when you are documenting a "moving line", you can't ask all the men to stand still, lower a bit, shift to the right etc to make sure you don't capture any naughty bits. There are also fleeting moments ("at attention !") where you don't have time to properly crop the camera and will crop it later. From the military's point of view, I think there was laso a conscious effort to force new inductees to drop any acquired cultural shyness right off the bat in a more dramatic way so that they later don't have problems with communal showers, tight living corners. And it is also a way to impose obediance to orders right from the stat. It may not necessarily mean that the young men would have been comfortable at school doing the same, but when faces with the military discipline, they had no choice and had to comply.
ReplyDelete