KAMERA OBSCURA

Harrison Marks couldn’t show everything, so he invited his readers to fill in the blanks.

You know, we rarely tell our friends we run a website. Experience has taught us not to. Those we tell usually comment upon the amount of nudity. Then we explain that Pulp Intl. is a historical site. We didn’t invent the nudity—this is the perversion of your fathers and grandfathers. For some reason that never seems to deflect the criticism, but that’s the way it goes. Anyway, here we go again into realms of historical smut with British photographer Harrison Marks and his famed erotic publication Kamera. The debut issue of this magazine sold over 150,000 copies, according to Marks’ website, and the imprint ran for eleven years, from 1957 to 1968. The cover you see above is issue 80, with model Louise Worth, and we have a few interior scans below. You’ll notice the pubes of the models have been disappeared into secret torture sites or something, but that was mandated by existing laws at the time the photos were made, and really, the allure of the shots is intact. There’s plenty of material online about the life and death of Harrison Marks, so we don’t have to go into more detail. We’ll just add that to enjoy vintage pulp is to spend time drawing connections between that and film noir, sleaze literature, pin-up art, burlesque dancing, early erotic movies, and many other art forms. It’s difficult to say when all those end and porn begins, but we know we haven’t come close. Scans below. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1939—Batman Debuts

In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale.

1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results

British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.

1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule’s main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule’s descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

Austro-Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or “Truth”, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.

Art by Sam Peffer, aka Peff, for Louis Charbonneau's 1963 novel The Trapped Ones.
Horwitz Books out of Australia used many celebrities on its covers. This one has Belgian actress Dominique Wilms.
Assorted James Bond hardback dust jackets from British publisher Jonathan Cape with art by Richard Chopping.
Cover art by Norman Saunders for Jay Hart's Tonight, She's Yours, published by Phantom Books in 1965.

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