We’re all familiar with stock photos. Nowadays, most professional photographers I know no longer take photos, but make stock images. These photos are sold through websites for download and reproduction. Designers grab these photos (sometimes actually paying for them) and then “re-work” them in Photoshop to create the desired image. Basically they take stock photos and make new photos out of them. Strange days.
Maybe not so strange. This system existed back in the earlier days of advertising and design as well. The images were often seconds, outtakes and highly adaptable images that could be used in any of a number of settings and advertising situations. The user would order it through the stock photo house (often out of a printed catalog). Then the stock house would send them either a slide or a print of whatever was needed for their use. The user would pay a “usage fee” depending on how the photo was to be used. If it was to be used in a dummy or comp, the fee would be much smaller than if it were to be used in a brochure printed in the millions of copies and distributed worldwide. Very practical, and everybody made money. It would still cost much less than hiring a “live” photographer and working with them to obtain the custom photo image you might need.
Often the stock photo house would make “generic”-style poses and scenarios (that could be used in a variety of ways) and attempt to sell these to the industry as well. It could be a housewife bending over a washing machine (used to sell washing machines or soap or whatever you want) or it could be a brutish-looking man with a stogie (a boss or foreman or even a working stiff). The concepts behind these images are hilariously familiar and yet still vague enough to be adaptable to a number of uses. Old magazines are peppered with these stock images used in the little ads buried throughout their pages.
In the postwar period—the glory years of “Mad Men”-style advertising—one of the most popular forms of stock photography was the “glamour” shot. This was an offshoot of model photography that would have a buxom beautiful woman posing in a variety of peculiar environments (and varying states of dress) that could be used for adverts or calendars or even picked up by “men’s magazines” and used to entice America’s hormone-soaked males.
A lot of these “glamour” stock photo companies were little more than a single somewhat slippery fella with a studio, camera equipment and a lot of props. I think of this territory as classic “bachelor pad” photography—that weird fetishistic territory where the hotshot handsome young man with a camera used the existing system to meet hot chicks and maybe get lucky. Then they would make some money on the side. It’s one small step above pornography. Indeed, back in the days of our fathers, this was viewed as “R-rated” pornography. Those old “morality code” systems disappeared in the late ’60s and are almost forgotten.
Once in a while I’ll get lucky and find an old catalog of glamour photography stock photos like this one. I’ve never heard of this guy. Some of the glamour photographers became quite famous, like Russ Meyer and Peter Gowland and even Bunny Yeager. But this guy doesn’t even use his name. It’s the 1960 stock photo catalog of a business called Enterprise Photos of Dallas, Texas—Pin-Ups for Advertising.
Exactly what kind of advertising could this stuff be used for? Dunno. They have all the terms and conditions of use on the cover and the rest of the thing is only photos of buxom scantily clad babes in silly poses. I swear I’ve seen some of these images in old “men’s magazines” of the ’50s and ’60s with names like Cocktail and Duke.
