Tinted Beauties: Hand-Tinted Art Deco Postcard Nudes
At lunch with Alexandre Dupouy and his wife Jocelyne, in June 2009, he asked if I had any "tinted nudes". He was referring to hand-tinted, real photo postcard nudes published in Paris circa 1920 ~ 1930. He showed me a few he had in his pocket, just purchased hours before at Carte Expo, the Paris postcard show. "Yes" I said, I have a good selection of them in my inventory as well as an excellent personal collection. He seemed at first skeptical, but when I assured him that I was not kidding, he said "I want to see them".
A few days later I returned to New York and emailed scans to Paris. Within days we agreed to do a book of "tinted nudes" the result of which is Beautes Teintees, published by Editions Astarte at the end of December, 2009. The book, filled with over 100 marvelous hand-tinted nudes, the majority coming from my personal collection with additional images from Alexandre. They epitomizing the art-deco style era of the nude in Paris.
The book includes a short text written by me in English, translated in Paris to French and edited with corrections here in New York. In brief, each of the images starts as a "standard" warm or sepia toned real photo postcard card (rppc). The coloring is then applied by hand, using brushes, air-brush and stencils (pochoirs) directly on the surface of the photographs, allowing the original sepia flesh tones to stand out against the stylized, art deco backgrounds.
A selection of hand-tinted nudes, most of which appear in the book, follows, without captions and in no particular order.
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