One of the things you notice about vintage photography is how what would become naturist tropes in photography were evident in the beginning of the naturist movement, and how vintage pornography appropriated the themes, leading to a blur between what is naturist and what was -overwhelmingly- early ‘pornorgraphy’, which seems rather mild and actually wholesome these days compared with what we can expect to see searching even Google images.

SLN previously held a ‘vintage’ season, and it proved popular, so we’re going to repeat that, and also try to replicate the vintage in a Second Life environment. We’ve therefore been researching the internet for vintage type photographs which, despite their intended origins, all fit rather neatly into a ‘vintage naturist’ theme quite easily nowadays.

The reason for this is because many were photographed out of doors, in scenes of nature, and therefore lend themselves easily to a naturist theme, even though some possibly pre-date the formulation of naturism as a lifestyle.

It’s often difficult to date them. In today’s Photoshop world it would be very easy to shoot a nude and make it appear to be 100 years old or more with a few keystrokes.

However, we’ve endeavoured to date them where possible, and even provide pen portraits of the information (photographers, dates, etc) wherever we can.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, then, SLN2 will have mostly a vintage theme.

To get things moving, we begin with photographs taken by Andre de Dienes, a Hungarian-Romanian photographer probably best known for his work with Marilyn Monroe, and a search for his work is dominated by those photoshoots.

However, there are many de Dienes shots that fit easily into a ‘vintage naturist’ theme, even if they never had any original intention to be ‘naturist’. Our vintage season begins with a gallery of his work (below).

All can probably be dated as post-war, from the late 40s through to the end of the 50s(?).

While de Dienes did other, interior shots and ‘artier’ shots, we’ve excluded these and used only photographs that would not have looked out of place in a naturist magazine of the 50s, 60s or 70s. We will also be trying to replicate the style of the photographers we highlight in an SL context, and the first of these galleries will be highlighted here on SLN2, with further shots on our Flickr page. I’ll inform you of these in due course.

Trine