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Alice Cooper and His Monster Family Hanging Out by the Pool at His Home in Los Angeles, 1975

American rock star Alice Cooper at his home with his girlfriend wearing a mask imitating The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the low-budget film which was re-released in 1975. The photographs were taken by Terry O’Neill in August 1975. The house burned down later that month, while he was away in New York.

The woman in these images is Cindy Lang. She and Alice separated in 1975 at which time Alice began a relationship with dancer Sheryl Goddard. Cindy never had any children. The kid is Micky Dolenz’s daughter Ami whom Alice used to babysit.

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer whose career spans over 54 years. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by music journalists and peers to be “The Godfather of Shock Rock”. He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock audiences.

Originating in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964, “Alice Cooper” was originally a band with roots extending back to a band called The Earwigs, consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, and Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and background vocals. By 1966, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar joined the three and Neal Smith was added on drums in 1967. The five named the band “Alice Cooper”, with Furnier eventually adopting the latter as his stage pseudonym. They released their 1969 debut album with limited chart success. Breaking out with the 1970 single “I’m Eighteen” and the third album Love It to Death,[citation needed] the band reached their commercial peak in 1973 with their sixth studio album, Billion Dollar Babies. After[citation needed] the band broke up, Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and began a solo career with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare. Over his career, Cooper has sold well over 50 million records.

Cooper has experimented with a number of musical styles, including art rock, hard rock, heavy metal, new wave, glam metal, and industrial rock. He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and has been described as the artist who “first introduced horror imagery to rock and roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship have permanently transformed the genre”. He is also known for his wit offstage, with The Rolling Stone Album Guide calling him the world’s most “beloved heavy metal entertainer”. Away from music, Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur, and, since 2004, a radio DJ with his classic rock show Nights with Alice Cooper. (Wikipedia)

50 Amazing Vintage Photos From the 1940s Volume 12

The 1940s (pronounced “nineteen-forties” and commonly abbreviated as “the 40s”) was a decade that began on January 1, 1940, and ended on December 31, 1949.

Most of World War II took place in the first half of the decade, which had a profound effect on most countries and people in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. The consequences of the war lingered well into the second half of the decade, with a war-weary Europe divided between the jostling spheres of influence of the Western world and the Soviet Union, leading to the beginning of the Cold War. To some degree internal and external tensions in the post-war era were managed by new institutions, including the United Nations, the welfare state, and the Bretton Woods system, facilitating the post–World War II economic expansion, which lasted well into the 1970s. The conditions of the post-war world encouraged decolonization and the emergence of new states and governments, with India, Pakistan, Israel, Vietnam, and others declaring independence, although rarely without bloodshed. The decade also witnessed the early beginnings of new technologies (such as computers, nuclear power, and jet propulsion), often first developed in tandem with the war effort, and later adapted and improved upon in the post-war era. (Wikipedia)

**A wealthy group of young people relax by a pool in California, 1940.**

**Traffic lights are made in Shreveport, Louisiana, and sent around the U.S. and abroad, December 1947.**

**Londoners seek shelter during WWII in the Aldwych tube station, April 1941.**

**Westinghouse demonstrates an electric razor using x-ray technology, May 1941.**

**Bolivian women check out the latest merchandise at a department store, August 1943.**

**A Marine reading his mail in a foxhole on Iwo Jima, March 1945.**

**Two young women on the way to the theater, New York City, 1946.**

**Lipstick inspectors at work in the 1940s.**

**Sponge diver John M. Gonatos puts on his diving suit in Tarpon Springs, Florida in the 1940s.**

**Couple napping on a subway train in New York City, 1946.**

**British sappers (also called pioneers or combat engineers) training to defuse landmines in 1943.**

**On top of the Empire State Building, New York, circa 1942.**

**American troops on their way back to New York harbor after V-Day, 1945.**

**Behind-the-scenes photo from a 1946 Ringling Brothers Circus**

**Macy’s department store detectives pose for photo with their backs turned to protect their identity. (1948)**

**Street at night during a fog, New Bedford, Massachusetts, January 1941.**

**Finnish soldier with his reindeer near the tiny village of Nautsi, Northern Lapland in Finland (1941)**

**High school sweethearts James Dougherty and Norma Jean Baker were married when she was 16 in 1942. They divorced in 1946 and she went on to become one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s**

**Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara in a publicity photo for the swashbuckling film, “The Black Swan”, 1942**

**Marlon Brando reads a script at his grandmother’s house in California, 1949.**

**Lucille Ball was a pin-up girl in Yank Magazine for the troops of WWII, 1945.**

**‘Golden Girl’ Betty White was a member of the American Women’s Voluntary Services during WWII. 1941**

**Dot Robinson and her daughter Betty pose with their Harleys in 1947. Dot was the first president of the Motor Maids and held this position for 25 years.**

**Members of the Maori Battalion who had fought in Greece, perform a haka for the King of Greece at Helwan, Egypt. 1941**

**These bathing beauties make an optical illusion at the beach in the 1940s.**

**Queen Elizabeth served in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II**

**Teens talking on the corner in NYC, 1948.**

**Ben Bowden shows off his prototype bicycle called the ‘Bowden Spacelander’ in 1946.**

**The famous photo by Nathaniel Fein, “The Babe Bows Out” (1948) won Fein the Pulitzer Prize for Photography.**

**A very young Robert De Niro Jr. with his dad Robert De Niro Sr., 1946**

**Women working on a Douglas C-47 cargo transport in Long Beach, 1942.**

**A couple stands by their futuristic Wonder Bolt car in 1947.**

**Bathing an African lion at the Los Angeles Zoo in 1940.**

**Noon meal, Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, 1948.**

**Ella Fitzgerald performing at the Downbeat Club in NYC, with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman in the audience back in 1948.**

**Stockholm, Sweden – Miss Sweden knocks out Miss Italy during an international women’s boxing match in 1949**

**At 19-years-old, Roza Shanina, a Soviet sniper, killed 54 men during WWII**

**A possum behind the camera in Australia, 1943.**

**Playing a game of pool at the general store in Franklin, Georgia. (1941)**

**Waiting at the bus stop in Lowell, Massachusetts. (1941)**

**Bike messengers leaving the White House on Dec. 7, 1941, day of the Pearl Harbor attack.**

**American troops treat a wounded dog on Orote Pennisula, Guam. (1944)**

**A goodbye kiss at Penn Station, NY, before shipping off to war (1942)**

**A British soldier reads a sign erected by British forces at the entrance of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany. (1945)**

**Grand Central Terminal in New York City, 1941.**

Queen of Muscle Beach: 20 Vintage Portraits of Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton From the 1940s

Abbye Eville, more commonly known around the world as Pudgy Stockton, was born August 11, 1917 in Santa Monica, California. During her childhood she acquired the nickname, “Pudgy” and it stuck with her; little did she know it was a name soon to be known all around the world.

After graduating high school, she started a sedentary job answering phones and became displeased with how the inactivity affected her body so she began lifting weights – a very humble beginning for the future, “Queen of Muscle Beach.”

She later told Sports Illustrated: “In those days, lifting weights was thought to be unfeminine. The misinformed think if women strength-trained, they’d become masculine looking. We laughed knowing they were wrong.”

On most weekends she could be found at Muscle Beach performing any number of highly skilled athletic feats. An example would be, at the height of 5-feet, 1-inch tall, weighing 115 pounds, she held a 100-pound dumbbell overhead with her right arm as she balanced atop her husband’s outstretched arms.

Pudgy was a living example of muscular womanhood. She was not only proud of her vibrant health and fitness, she displayed her figure by being photographed with prominent muscle men of her era, such as Steve Reeves, George Eiferman, Joe Gold, and John Grimek.

In 1947, Pudgy and her husband Les, organized the first weightlifting contest in the United States for women. In 1948, chosen as “Miss Physical Culture Venus,” she was awarded a cash prize of $1,000 from pioneer physical culturist, Bernarr Macfadden.

Possibly the most admired of the original women’s physical culturists, Pudgy regularly wrote for Strength & Health magazine while her column was popular by both sexes. Attracting admiring stares and whistles on Muscle Beach, Pudgy’s two-piece bathing suits added to her allure. She recalled, “You couldn’t buy a two-piece, so my mother ripped apart an old brassiere to use as a pattern.”

Pudgy Stockton was honored by the Association of Oldetime Barbell & Strongmen in 1991; received the Steve Reeves International Society Pioneer Award in 1998, and inducted into Joe Weider’s Hall of Fame in 2000.

She died of Alzheimer’s disease on June 26, 2006, at age 88.

Portraits of Wild Bill Hickok, the Most Famous of All Western Gunfighters

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James Butler Hickok (May 27, 1837 – August 2, 1876), better known as “Wild Bill” Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation.

Hickok was born and raised on a farm in northern Illinois at a time when lawlessness and vigilante activity was rampant because of the influence of the “Banditti of the Prairie.” Drawn to this ruffian lifestyle, he headed west at age 18 as a fugitive from justice, working as a stagecoach driver and later as a lawman in the frontier territories of Kansas and Nebraska. He fought and spied for the Union Army during the American Civil War and gained publicity after the war as a scout, marksman, actor, and professional gambler. He was involved in several notable shootouts during the course of his life.

In 1876, Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory (present-day South Dakota) by Jack McCall, an unsuccessful gambler. The hand of cards which he supposedly held at the time of his death has become known as the dead man’s hand: two pairs; black aces and eights.

Hickok remains a popular figure of frontier history. Many historic sites and monuments commemorate his life, and he has been depicted numerous times in literature, film, and television. He is chiefly portrayed as a protagonist, although historical accounts of his actions are often controversial, and much of his career is known to have been exaggerated both by himself and by contemporary mythmakers. While Hickok claimed to have killed numerous named and unnamed gunmen in his lifetime, his career as a gunfighter only lasted from 1861 to 1871. According to Joseph G. Rosa, Hickok’s biographer and the foremost authority on Wild Bill, Hickok killed only six or seven men in gunfights.

**Portrait of a young James Butler Hickok, aka “Wild Bill” Hickok.**

The “Bra Burning” Miss America Protest, 1968

The Miss America protest was a demonstration held at the Miss America 1969 contest on September 7, 1968, attended by about 200 feminists and civil rights advocates. The feminist protest was organized by New York Radical Women and included putting symbolic feminine products into a “Freedom Trash Can” on the Atlantic City boardwalk, including bras, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, false eyelashes, mops, and other items.

While it was widely rumored that the trash can was then lit on fire — sparking the decades-old myth of bra-burning feminists — the protest occurred incident (and flame) free. However, thanks to the widespread media that the pageant already drew, the protest and the cause was heavily covered in newspapers across the nation.

The dramatic, symbolic use of a trash can to dispose of feminine objects caught the media’s attention. Protest organizer Hanisch said about the Freedom Trash Can afterward, “We had intended to burn it, but the police department, since we were on the boardwalk, wouldn’t let us do the burning.” A story by Lindsy Van Gelder in the New York Post carried a headline “Bra Burners and Miss America.” Her story drew an analogy between the feminist protest and Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards. Individuals who were present said that no one burned a bra nor did anyone take off her bra.

The parallel between protesters burning their draft cards and women burning their bras were encouraged by organizers including Robin Morgan. The phrase became headline material and was quickly associated with women who chose to go braless. Feminism and “bra-burning” then became linked in popular culture.

Lovely Vintage Photos of 1930s Couples Posing With Their Cars

At home or in public, 1930s women most commonly wore dresses with wide shoulders; puffy sleeves; modest necklines; higher, belted waistlines; and mid-calf flared hemlines. Frilly bows, ruffles, buttons, and other details often decorated dresses.

Formal dresses most dramatically displayed the decade’s willowy, elegant silhouette. Evening gowns in fluid fabrics were cut on the bias to create flowing, figure-hugging lines that reached the floor. Popular fabrics included satin, rayon, and chiffon.

Hollywood screen stars Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich helped introduce women’s trousers for sports and leisure. These trousers were wide-legged and high-waisted, often styled like sailors’ pants. Women wore baggier, casual lounge pants on vacation and at the beach.

For men, suits of the 1930s typically had high waists and slightly tapered, creased trousers with turned-up cuffs. Younger men preferred baggier trousers and longer jackets. Suits were darker blue, brown, or gray for cooler weather, with lighter tones for warm weather. Bold patterns included stripes, checks, and plaids.

A vest, pocket handkerchief, shorter tie, hat (such as a fedora or bowler), and dark or two-toned leather dress shoes completed the look.

Here is a set of vintage photos from Vintage Cars & People that shows couples posing with their cars in the 1930s.

**A middle-aged couple posing with a Steyr XX Cabriolet on a gravel road running along the bank of a lake on a bleak summer’s day, circa 1930**

A stylish couple posing with a Röhr 8 9/50 PS Typ R in front of a monumental equestrian statue at Deutsches Eck, a landmark in the town of Koblenz at the confluence of the rivers Rhine and Moselle, circa 1930

A cheerful lady in a floral dress and a dapper fellow in a suit posing with a Hanomag 4/20 PS Cabriolet-Limousine in the backyard of a private home. The car is registered in the Bavarian province of Middle Franconia, June 1932

**A middle-class couple posing with a 1932 DeSoto Six on a sunny spring day in the countryside. The car is registered in the state of Michigan with 1932 license plates, May 1932**

**A stylish couple posing on the running board of an Opel 4/20 PS Cabriolet 2 convertible in the countryside. The car is registered in the Saxon district of Leipzig, circa 1933**

**A well-to-do couple posing with their horse and their 1932 Willys-Overland Sedan on a sunny winter’s day. The car is registered in New York State with 1933 license plates, circa 1933**

**A cheerful couple and posing with an Opel 1,2 Liter in front of a middle-class home in a residential street. The car is registered in the Prussian province of Saxony, circa 1935**

**A couple posing with a Fiat Balilla 508 A on a gravel road in the countryside, circa 1935**

**A middle-aged couple wearing raincoats and hats with an Opel 1,2 Liter. The car is registered in the German state of Württemberg, circa 1935**

**A stylish young couple and their dog posing with a 1933 Graham Blue Streak Sedan in an middle class neighborhood. The car is registered in the state of New York with 1935 license plates, 1935**

**An elegant couple posing with a Citroën 11 CV in front of an impressive Renaissance building in a busy historic town centre, circa 1935**

**Two stylish couples posing with a 1934 Chevrolet Master Sedan at the seaside on the island of Rügen. The car is registered in the city of Leipzig, circa 1935**

**Two stylish couples posing with a Adler Trumpf Junior Cabrio-Limousine on a dirt road in the countryside. The car is registered in the city of Berlin, circa 1935**

**A cheerful lady in a light-colored dress and a fellow wearing a suit and tie posing with an English-built Citroën 7.5 H.P. Type C, circa 1936**

**A middle-aged couple posing with a Triumph Gloria Vitesse on a gravel road in the countryside. The location is probably somewhere in Scotland, circa 1936**

**A stylish couple posing with a 1935 Chevrolet Master Deluxe in late afternoon sunshine, circa 1936**

**A stylish couple posing with a 1936 Chevrolet Standard Coupe on a gravel road in the countryside on July 22, 1936**

**A stylish couple posing with a two-tone Peugeot 201 Cabriolet by the side of a country road, circa 1936**

A cheerful couple posing with a Steyr 50 on the side of the road in the town of Melk on the bank of the Danube with the famous monastery visible in the background. The car is registered in the city of Vienna, circa 1937

A couple wearing light-colored suits in the fashion of the thirties posing with an Opel 6 Cabriolet in the countryside. A mountain range can be seen in the background. The car is registered in Upper Bavaria, 1937

A stylish couple posing with a Steyr 50 in the Styrian village of Palfau, rural Austria, the building in the background houses an inn called ‘Gasthof zur Kaisergemse’. The car is registered in the city of Vienna, circa 1937

**A cheerful couple posing with a 1937 Dodge Sedan on a sunny summer afternoon, somewhere in Canada, 1938**

A cheerful couple posing with a Steyr 220 Limousine on a country road in the Ahr Valley, a wine-growing region south of the city of Bonn. The car is registered in the administrative region of Düsseldorf, circa 1938

**A couple posing with a Steyr 220 Limousine on a mountain road overlooking a valley, circa 1938**

A fellow in a pinstripe suit and a lady in a floral dress posing on the fenders of a Mercedes-Benz 170 V, near the town of Plauen in Saxony. The car is registered in the Saxon district of Zwickau, August 1938

A lady in a short-sleeved dress and a fellow in a suit posing with a Mercedes-Benz 170 V in the countryside. The car is registered in the state of Bavaria, most probably in the district of Lower Bavaria, circa 1938

**A leisurely clad couple posing with a 1933 Chevrolet Sedan on a sunny summer’s day. The car is registered in the state of New York, August 25, 1938**

**A young couple posing with a Fiat 521 Berlina on the side of a road lined with Italian stone pines. The Fiat is registered in the province of Imperia, September 25, 1938**

**A young elegant couple in trench coats and an elderly gent in a woollen coat posing with a German-built Ford Eifel. The car is registered in the city of Bremen, circa 1938**

**Two fashionable couples posing with an elegant two-tone Wanderer W 23 Cabriolet in summertime. The car is registered in the city of Berlin, circa 1938**

**An elderly couple and their chauffeur posing with an 1930 Essex Sedan at Lorelei Rock on the bank of the River Rhine, circa 1930**

**A middle-aged couple from Brooklyn posing with a shiny 1937 Chevrolet Master De Luxe in the countryside. The car is registered in New York State with 1937 license plates, September 1937**

**A fashionable couple posing with a 1939 Mercury Eight Club Coupe near a suspension bridge on a bleak winter’s day, circa 1939**

**A fashionable couple posing with a Fiat 500 A on a gravel road in the countryside. The car is registered in the city of Stuttgart, 1939**

**A middle-aged couple posing with a 1939 DeSoto Business Coupe in a back yard in summertime, circa 1939**

**A stylish couple posing with a Wanderer W 240 on a sunny summer’s day. In the background, a famous landmark – Lorelei Rock on the bank of the River Rhine – can be seen, 1939**

**A well-to-do couple posing with an Opel Admiral on a bleak winter’s day. The car is registered in the state of Hesse, circa 1939**

30 Beautiful Photos Show Styles of a Young Mary Tyler Moore

Born 1936 in New York City, American actress, producer, and social advocate Mary Tyler Moore began with a job as “Happy Hotpoint”, a tiny elf dancing on Hotpoint appliances in TV commercials during the 1950s series Ozzie and Harriet. Her first regular television role was as a mysterious and glamorous telephone receptionist in Richard Diamond, Private Detective.

Moore was widely known for her prominent television sitcom roles in The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977). She won seven Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. Her film work included 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980’s Ordinary People, the latter earning Moore a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

With her two most prominent roles challenging gender stereotypes and norms, The New York Times said Moore’s “performances on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show helped define a new vision of American womanhood”. The Guardian said “her outwardly bubbly personality and trademark broad, toothy smile disguised an inner fragility that appealed to an audience facing the new trials of modern-day existence”.

Moore was an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism and diabetes prevention. She died at the age of 80 in 2017, at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut. Take a look at these beautiful photos to see portrait of a young Mary Tyler Moore in the 1960s and 1970s.

35 Amazing Vintage Photographs Record Life in Wyoming From Between the 1900s and 1910s

Laura Webb Nichols (1883–1962) got her first camera on her 16th birthday, October 28, 1899, as a gift from Bert Oldman, a miner who would become her first husband the following year and the subject of many of her early photographs.

The earliest photographs are of her immediate family, self-portraits, and landscape images of the cultivation of the region surrounding the mining town of Encampment, Wyoming. In addition to the personal imagery, the young Nichols photographed miners, industrial infrastructure, and a small town’s adjustment to a sudden, but ultimately fleeting, population increase. The images chronicle the domestic, social, and economic aspects of the sparsely populated frontier of south-central Wyoming.

As early as 1906, Nichols was working for hire as a photographer for industrial documentation and family portraits, developing and printing from a darkroom she fashioned in the home she shared with her husband and their children. After the collapse of the copper industry, Nichols remained in Encampment
and established the Rocky Mountain Studio, a photography and photofinishing service, to help support her family. Her commercial studio was a focal point of the town throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

**Mr. and Mrs. Shafe and Agnes Brackley, 1914**

**Frances Heaton and Russel Parr, 1916**

(Photos by Lora Webb Nichols / Lora Webb Nichols Photography Archive)

Amazing Women’s Hat Fashions From Between the 1920s and 1940s

Hats are head coverings with a crown and usually a brim. They are distinguished from caps that are brimless but may have a visor. Hats are important because they adorn the head, which is the seat of human rational powers, and they also frame the face. Women’s hats have often been differentiated from men’s headwear, although in modern times, many women’s hat styles have been copied from men’s.

In the early 20th century, it was fashionable for a lady’s silhouette to resemble an S-shape. The hat was an essential element. It was worn on top of piled up hair and positioned to cantilever over the face. This curvaceous form was carried through the bodice that was pouched over the waist and ended in a trained skirt. Also popular in this era was the ‘toque’, the name given to a brimless hat.

By the end of the war and in honor of the soldier’s girlfriend (the era’s heroine) the fashionable ideal was for a youthful look. Hats slipped down the head, making the wearer appear as if she were dressing-up in her mother’s hat. Conveniently, the deeper crown also provided more security in keeping the hat in place while traveling in an open car.

The crown continued to deepen in the 1920s, eventually covering the entire head in the ‘cloche’ style. Brims were optional but usually utilized only on summer hats, where the brim acted as a visor from the sun’s rays. By the early 1930s crowns became shallow once again to accommodate the decade’s fuller curled hairstyles. Wide brimmed hats were popular. On hot summer day’s they acted like parasols, which were now out of fashion. Mannish styled ‘fedoras’ were perfectly suited to wear with tailored suits. By the end of the decade, crowns began to grow upward much like the 3-story hats of the 1880’s.

The wartime 1940s saw a huge variety of hats that were suitable for any face shape, hairstyle or personal preference. Throughout the war and on both sides of the Atlantic, elaborate creations brightened dreary utility fashions, brought about by rationing. In fact the only items not rationed were hat materials. Explosions of feathers, veiling and artificial flowers were popular. There was also a brief resurgence of the bonnet, as well as turbans and halo hats. The latter sat on the back of the head and framed the face and the fashionable upswept pompadour hairstyles.

Photograph of a Woman Seen From the Back, ca. 1862

Woman Seen From the Back is an 1860s photograph by 19th-century French photographer, Vicomte Onesipe Aguado de las Marismas (1830–1893). It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was purchased by the Museum in 2005 as part of the Gilman Photographs Collection.

Onesipe Aguado was the youngest of three brothers born to the wealthy banker Alexandre Aguado. His oldest brother Olympe Aquado were amateur enthusiasts who split their time between socialite activities, a close family life, and photography. Upon their father’s death in 1842, Onesipe and Olympe inherited a considerable fortune that included vacation homes.

Onesipe and Olympe were students of Gustave Le Gray, and were active early members of the Societe Francaise de Photographie. They were early makers of photographic enlargements and known for their experimentations with photographic processes—producing daguerreotypes, cartes-des-visites, techniques with negative paper for landscapes and collodion on glass for portraits. They were also known for the diversity of their subjects—deserted interiors, close studies of trees as well as sweeping pastorals, portraits, reproductions of works of arts and snapshots of sailboats.

At once a portrait, a fashion plate, and a jest, this fascinating image expresses Aguado’s whimsical mood, and is probably an extension of his work on foreshortening. It is strangely devoid of depth, as if the sitter were a two-dimensional cutout, a mere silhouette. The figure brings to mind the compositions of such painters as Caspar David Friedrich and René Magritte, both of whom made haunting use of figures seen from the back.

The portrait, Woman Seen From the Back, a salted paper print from glass negative, suggests the wit and playfulness of its photographer. The image is devoid of depth, possibly an extension of the artists’ work on foreshortening, making the sitter appear two dimensional and merely a silhouette.

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