Review: Peep Show Pinups

Dear Constant Reader, This book is only tangentially related to burlesque — in a couple of ways you might expect and one you probably don’t. Michelle L’amour told me about this book, probably not long after it came out, and I’m grateful. Peep Show Pinups: The Golden Era by Jo and Paul Richardson, 2009. The book is primarily a survey of erotic photographs from the mid-19th century to about the 1920s. There are less than two dozen pages of the history of photography, with many photos included and some brief commentary before each section. The rest of the pages are photos of women in varying states of undress. The photos are loosely organized by categories. It begins with Daguerreotypes and the Early Years, which is only a few pages of mid-19th century images, showing that as long as there have been photographs, there have been nudes. The second section, Women Posed, looks at “many of the varied styles and themes during the first century of the genre”. It’s pictures of women, mostly…