Pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager dies at age 85.

[aceplace57]

Bunny Yeager’s pin up photos helped make Bettie Page an icon. She contributed work during Playboy’s early days. Her books on photography are some of the best references out there. I have a copy of Bunny Yeager’s Darkroom and learned a lot.

She’ll be missed. R.I.P. Bunny

Bunny Yeager dies at 85; photographer of Bettie Page pinups

Yeager came to be admired for her use of natural light, sometimes enhanced by flash even in daylight, to make a model’s skin look luminous. But unlike nude photographers whose depictions of women were hyper-sexual and pumped up, Yeager found sensuality in a more natural look.

“Bunny has that good understanding of how to photograph the female body. At the same time, she knew how to captivate men’s sexual fantasies,” Miami gallery owner Harold Golen told the New York Times in 2011 when the gallery hosted an exhibition of Yeager’s work. “Her women are real. None of them are spray-tanned. Their breasts aren’t ballooned. They have curves and a bit of cellulite.”

Yeager took a somewhat more wholesome, holiday-themed photo of Page — nude except for a Santa hat — and in 1955 sent it off to fledgling magazine Playboy. “I figured because they were new they might pay attention to an amateur, and that’s what happened,” she told the London Telegraph in 2012.

[dropzone]

And, if I may be shallow for a moment, seriously hot herself. Link in spoiler because it is Rolleiflex porn. Otherwise, it’s a pretty lady in a 50s one-piece.

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/i/newscms/2014_22/466181/140525-bunny-yeager-jms-2119_d5a04e61060e780c87a1b8f9ea5fd9c3.jpg

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I think she was the only female photographer that Playboy used until many years later. A real pioneer in an otherwise inherently sexist business.

[AppallingGael]

Speaking of Bettie Page, the “Bettie Page” store on the Bowery (and perhaps Las Vegas and any others as may be out there) is as of this week called “Tatyana” after the chief designer of the line (and co-CEO of the company). I don’t know if somebody sued or if Tatyana decided she wants to be more famous, or was afraid people didn’t know Bettie any more.