The Softer Sex
This issue of Playboy is a South African edition! Playboy South Africa has lived and died twice in Africa now, once in the 1990’s and once in the 2010’s. This magazine comes from the former years.
I thought this editorial of Sam Fox was really beautifully and tastefully shot.
Below and above shows the playmate of the month, Miss October’s, centrefold in the magazine.
The above and below “Cuba Libre!” editorial in B&W is also really beautifully shot.
This 1975 edition was given to my partner as a gift, it’s his birth month and year. Ive made a selection of my favourites or of the more interesting pages which incorporate imagery of women in them to show here.
I find the cover of this edition really beautiful, whimsical and romantic, more so than other editions Ive seen.
Above is a pull-out postcard which a reader can use to apply for a subscription to the magazine with the statement: “Knowing what a man wants”.
You can even order life-size (!) posters of your favourite Playmates or bridge decks/playing cards (below).
In comparison to the cover of the magazine I was pretty surprised by this editorial featuring Linda Lovelace. She was an American pornographic actress made famous for her role in the hardcore 1972 movie Deep Throat. I suppose its maybe not so surprising considering her context,- I just didn’t expect ( maybe rather conservativly) the magazine to publish content with men and women together in a sex act.
The above image reminder me so much of the below, very famous painting by French artist Gustave Courbet called L’Origine du monde (“The Origin of the World”)
Above and below is the Miss February Playmate centrefold.
This below editorial campaign for a ties, “Fit to be Untied”, shows two models being tied up with three men on the double page spread and, on the other, a single page spread one women, wrists bound. The men in suits the women in half undress.
This is the April edition of Playboy South Africa which I shot with Yolande Malherbe in my studio in Cape Town. It was a really fantastic shoot with beautiful lingerie brands and lots of gold and sparkly accessories.
The theme for the shoot was “selfies” and we used original Polaroid type film to shoot a series of selfies (some are shown in this post). We also incorporated a Polaroid camera in some of the images.
A TV crew joined the shoot and did some filming for an edition of Glambition,- Jo-Ann Strauss’s TV series at that time.
The shoot was all done with a sort of white-crumpled-sheets background, black lingerie, accessories and Polaroid’s. I really loved this shoot and had so much fun doing it.
Ive mixed in some behind the scenes shots below.
Below is a self portrait I shot, just for fun. It was the same set-up as the cover of the magazine.
Below are more behind the scenes shots and also my interview with Jo-ann.
I adore this book. I see it almost every day because it sits under my iMac with its friend, Fraulein by Ellen Von Unwerth on my desk. I was gifted the book by my partner about 9 years ago. It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s plump and the pages have a strange smell.
From the dust jacket of the book:
Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly’s Rose, c’est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film on DVD. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and writer Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulations, obsession, fetish and seething desire.
Equal parts fashion shoot, art monograph, metaphysical mystery and social and cultural archeology of the French capital, and neo-noir art-house film – Rose, crest Paris is the steamy tale of twin sisters, known only as B and Rose, and a third principal – the city itself.. An abduction leads to a detective story that unfolds in the streets, cafes, cabarets, museums, abandoned factories and grand hotels in Paris. What happened to the missing sister? Was there a plot? Was she really kidnapped? Is she alive or dead? Is it in fact a case of mistaken identity?Rheims and Bramly create a series of extraordinary tableaux suggesting all these possibilities and many more featuring a a host of celebrity figures.
It’s a monograph of the most mysterious and beautiful kind. When paging through it from start to finish (a long slow task for me) one goes into another world. Choosing which were my favourite images to represent their book was very challenging. Represented here are just a few of my favourites… 
