Table Of ContentWheels and Curves
Walter Honscheidt/Uwe Scheid
Wheels and Curves
Erotic Photographs
of the Twenties
Benedikt Taschen
The photographs and illustrative material
in this book are from the Uwe Scheid Collection,
Uberherm/Saar.
This book was printed on 100% chlorine-
free bleached paper in accordance
with the TCF standard.
© 1994 Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH
Hohenzollemring 53, D-50672 Koln
English translation: Roger Warner
Design: Eberhard Wolf
Printed in Portugal
ISBN 3-8228-8660-2
GB
The advent of the motor
car gave the gents
something else to think
about besides women. But
the ladies rose to the
challenge, and automobile
bodywork became the
perfect backdrop for their
own on country excursions
in the Twenties.
Wheels and Curves
Ever since the invention of photography, ladies dressed and
undressed have been among the favourite subjects of the gents
behind the lenses. In the prudish Dark Ages of the 19th century,
when permissiveness was yet to come, erotic photographs were
already being taken - in feverish privacy, needless to say - and
were sold in much the same way as the naughty drawings and
engravings of previous centuries. Not till after the First World
War did things begin to change. Finally, the corset of conven¬
tional morality was eased.
People like pictures. If they lack the imagination, equip¬
ment, skill or subject themselves, they have someone else make
(or take) the pictures. For many centuries, this simple fact pro¬
vided artists everywhere with a living. But with Daguerre, Fox
Talbot and Niepce, art suddenly faced serious competition from
“What’s so funny? Is my car too
photography. In the prosperous 19th century the middle classes
low or is my skirt too high ? ”
took to commissioning their own portraits and genre paint¬
(French cartoon, c. 1924)
ings too, trespassing on what had hitherto been the preserve of
the aristocracy; for artists, it was a boom time. Not with stand¬
ing, they campaigned long and hard and often acrimoniously
against the rapid popular success of the new competition. It was
understandable that they should do so, but ineffectual. The
photographers, armed not only with technical and artistic but
also commercial skills, made their craft a business on a well-
nigh industrial scale, particularly in France. When one Paris
studio was raided by gendarmes at the end of the century, on
suspicion of trading in indecent photographs, examination of
the books revealed staggering success in the export sector: no
fewer than 25,000 postcard copies of a single shot had been
sold to a Heidelberg client, for instance.
One of the reasons why photography quickly found such
favour was that the Victorians were great believers in progress,
and liked paying homage to innovation and invention. Another
reason was eloquently expressed in a letter written by Elizabeth
Barrett Browning in December 1843: “Think of a man sitting
down in the sun and leaving his facsimile in all its full comple¬
tion of outline and shadow, stedfast [sic] on a plate, at the end
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of a minute and a half! The Mesmeric disembodiment of spirits
strikes one as a degree less marvellous. And several of these
wonderful portraits... like engravings - only exquisite and
delicate beyond the work of graver - have I seen lately -
longing to have such a memorial of every Being dear to me in
the world. It is not merely the likeness which is precious in such
cases - but the association, and the sense of nearness involved
in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying
there fixed for ever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I
think - and it is not at all monstrous in me to say what my
brothers cry out against so vehemently,... that I would rather
have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest
Artist’s work ever produced. I do not say so in respect (or dis¬
respect) to Art, but for Love’s sake.”
If it is true that the fidelity to nature, nuances of tone and
subtlety of a photograph can convey the “sense of nearness” of
a beloved and perhaps departed person far better than an en¬
graving or drawing can, it is easy to see that erotic subjects must Photograph, c. 1920
benefit far more from being recorded in light rather than with Uwe Scheid Collection
a pen, brush or gouge. The eye of the beholder can enter into a
“real” world of flesh. In the mind’s eye, the woman in a picture
can become an object.
“The clear objectivity of the camera. Objective crystal.
Glass of authentic poetry. The hand no longer intervenes. Fine
physico-chemical harmonies. A plate sensitive to the tenderest
of nuances.” Thus Salvador Dali, writing at the time when the
pictures in this book were taken. He himself would continue,
he noted, “to regret the consequences that invariably result
when an artist’s draughtsmanship has interfered.”
Objects of Desire
The subjects chosen by the anonymous photographers whose
work is included here need come as no surprise. In a male mar¬
ket, the pursuit of woman is a perennial theme. But ever since
its invention, the car, far from being a mere mode of transport,
had been an object of desire as well. An obvious status symbol,
it was felt to be a symbol of potency and prowess too, a mobile
means of putting intimate facts on public display.
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Photograph, c. 1920
Uwe Scheid Collection
“The automobile,” wrote John Keats in The Insolent Cha¬
riots, “changed our dress, manners, social customs, vacation
habits, the shape of our cities, consumer purchasing patterns,
common tastes and positions in intercourse.” For the voyeur-
ish photographer, the car was a natural, sensual setting for
pictures of ladies clad scantily or not at all. In the course of
the 20th century, the car has posed serious competition for the
ladies; when men get together in pubs, they are as likely to
talk of cars as they are of women, and teenage youths may
well invest their hard-earned cash in wheels rather than a girl¬
friend. But the male ideal is still both, of course, and our
photographers clearly knew that. The pictures were taken in
the country for a self-evident reason: most garages are too
cramped for photography, and most girls will draw the line at
being photographed in the altogether outside their own front
doors, so the best solution was simply to drive off into the
wild blue yonder and find some private patch in the greenery.
For the well-to-do middle classes, the weekend motor into the
country became one of the most popular pastimes of the
Twenties. Rest and recreation in the bosom of nature were
available wherever one chose to pull over - and perhaps a
little recreation of a different kind.
The symbolic juxtaposition of car and woman has a long
tradition that reaches back a full century to the birth of the
automobile. Amateur photographers filled their albums with
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