National No Pants Day
Today is National No Pants Day.
Of course, that takes me in a different direction than what was intended. It started in the early 1980s at the University of Texas at Austin as a campus stunt. People walking around in public in their underwear, acting like nothing is unusual. It spread, became organized, and now sits on the calendar as a planned bit of public absurdity. That’s the idea behind it.
I shoot in the space between fashion, pornochic, and nude because it doesn’t hide what it is. The sexuality is not implied, and it’s not softened. It’s part of the structure of the photograph.
Sévérine brought that directly into my shoot. Her presence is openly sexual, controlled, and fully aware of itself. Nothing tentative about it. The makeup and styling by Blanche LeBeau push it further, not decorative, not secondary, but part of the same intent, shaping how that sexuality is presented and held in place.
This is the genre I work in.
National No Pants Day fits right in.
More on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com
A Studio Nude From the Mid-1960s
This original medium-format negative, shot sometime between 1960 and 1964, captures a nude model posed in a studio. The setup is simple: a seamless backdrop, a strong key light from the left casting a sharp shadow, and the model in stiletto heels holding a pose as she is dancing. The frame number in the rebate and the imprint from a Hasselblad 120 back place it firmly in the working methods of the era.
What stands out most is the difference in aesthetic between then and now. In the early 1960s, the “ideal” nude model was shaped as much by stage and dance influences as by fashion—often lean but not overly muscular, with a natural body and a poise drawn from performance. Hair was styled, makeup applied, and the presentation carried a certain theatrical quality. Today, the visual language of nude photography spans a far wider spectrum—from unretouched realism to heavily stylized, digitally polished work—and the concept of the “ideal” is far less fixed.
This negative is part of a much larger archive I’ve been building, preserving examples of cultural and erotic photography from different decades. You can view more pieces like this in my gallery From My Collections (Cultural & Erotic) here:
https://www.secondfocus.com/gallery/From-My-Collections-Cultural-Erotic/G0000h1LWkCCepcc/
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