This is the cutest story we received this week!
It came to us from Barnabé Moinard!
A gray and cold January morning at a market while unpacking in the early morning. Among the cardboard boxes of black and white photographs, six pink plastic sleeves appeared, held together by a worn elastic band.
The yellow letters presented by two female silhouettes announce the content: in each sleeve a series of twelve Kodak color positives of pin-ups.
We are in Italy, in the early 1960s.
Technofilm, based in Milan, published series of photographs in particular: travels in Europe, famous cities and monuments, children’s stories, masterpieces of art… The firm introduced the Stereo-Rama in Italy and thus widely distributed its vast repertoire of images. Inserted into a hand-held viewer, the view boards were scrolled one after the other. An optical effect made them appear three-dimensional. In 1950 the first pin-ups appeared.
But following a lawsuit regarding the viewing system, the Italian brand had to stop marketing these devices. This is why the following series will no longer be arranged in a circle on a cardboard wheel but in the form of slides in 24×36 format stored in plastic sleeves.
With such an archive we would like to write a story to put these slides into perspective. What is the history of the pin-up? What are its origins ? Its evolution, its uses and the reactions that the myth aroused in the post-war context? Above all, we would look for different routes. We would like to cross the 1960s and Pop art as we would cross Venice: through the parallel streets in search of forgotten objects far from the marked circuits.
Then we come across Pauline Boty (1938-1966), a London shooting star who had gone completely under the radar despite her dazzling work. Her paintings The Only Blonde in the World, Scandal ’63, It’s a man world are totally in tune with the times, a lucid and critical look at society. Perhaps she was also dealing with a certain prejudice. Because how can you be an artist when you look like a pin-up?
Further on, there is Anni Sprinkle, an American artist and activist who, with Anatomy of a Pin-Up Photo (1991), finally gave us a reading framework.
But let’s stay in Italy and go back in time – after all, the streets of Venice also lead to Rome – and rediscover Boccaccio 70. Released in 1962, the film brings together four episodes on morality and love in modern times, shot by four directors: Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio de Sica. Federico Fellini filmed The Temptation of Doctor Antonio.
Doctor Antonio had given himself a mission: to be the guardian of morality. At the wheel of his Fiat, he tracked down vice, crime and immorality that are surging. He chased couples, interrupted a cabaret, teared off magazine covers… Then one day, in the park in front of his windows, an advertising board was erected. Anita Ekberg, immense, superb and disturbing, invited you to drink more milk “Bevete più latte!” » This image haunted him night and day, he hallucinated, started to be delirious then tried to climb on the poster. Anita Ekberg came out of the panel and walked through the streets and drove the doctor so crazy he is taken away by an ambulance in the early morning.
In front of these seventy-one pin-ups gathered in the sleeves, Doctor Antonio would have cried scandal.
But this January morning, it wasn’t madness that won out, it was the pleasure of getting ones hands on a quality archive, a support for research and discoveries.
Barnabé Moinard
Barnabé Moinard Photographies
Pin-up [Series 1-6] – Technofilm, Milan,
71 color slides, c. 1960.
Price : 350 euros
www.barnabemoinard.com
@barnabemoinard_photographies
