Ivy League Posture Photos - part 20

 Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  But, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos are not connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are five more posture photos taken at Yale that I had the opportunity to acquire.  For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive.  Two of these men have not passed away, so their names are redacted.

This is freshman Dean Allison Waters on Oct. 9, 1953.

An article in the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation described how in spring, 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to produce "PhotoMetric" posture photos like this showing front, rear, side and top views.

This is freshman S.W. on Oct. 9, 1953.

This is freshman J.W. on Oct. 16, 1953.

This is freshman Stanley Ebner on Oct 2, 1951.  Before 1952, posture photos were taken from the side only.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.  The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.  Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is freshman Henry David Marcus on March 20, 1951.

Were these photos an invasion of privacy for the students?  By today's standards, yes.  By the standards of the day, not so much.  In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  Being asked to strip and even being photographed naked as part of a posture examination would not seem too outrageous, since the staff conducting this was all-male (and remember that Yale was an all-male school).

Some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos, since the students did not give consent for their publication.  My reply:

1. To protect the privacy of the students, I redact the names of students who may still be alive (despite the fact that their names have already been published on an online auction site).  I only publish the names of students who have died.  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses, children, grandchildren, etc. of the deceased person.

2. In my opinion, publishing these photos is similar to publishing nude photos of athletes and soldiers taken by LIFE magazine photographers.  At the time, the understanding of the photo subjects was that photos with frontal nudity would never be published in the magazine (and they never were), but the LIFE photo archive containing those photos is now publicly available online, and nobody seems to be complaining about it.

3. I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.

Vintage Athletes - Part 44

 More Baseball Cards

A lot of you enjoyed my fake baseball cards in my last Vintage Athletes post, so here are some more of them.

My fake cards use real photos of the players, just photos that you normally wouldn't see on a baseball card.  These photos were all black and white, so I colorized them to make the player stand out.  Without further ado, here are real and fake baseball cards for 12 more players.

Don Lang played for the Cincinnati Reds.  This is a real baseball card.

And this is my fake Don Lang card, using a 1939 photo taken by LIFE photographer Bernard Hoffman.

George Shuba played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

My fake card uses a 1955 locker room photo by LIFE photographer John Dominis.  Shuba's head is cut off because Dominis was photographing other players, and Shuba happened to be in the background.  How do we know it's George Shuba?  Because in other photos in the photo set, we can see his face, and he's in front of the locker with his number (#8).

Hal Newhouser played for the Cleveland Indians ...

as captured in this uncredited locker room photo.  Pants?  Who needs pants?

Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier to become the first black player in Major League Baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1947.

LIFE photographer Francis Miller photographed Robinson in the locker room in 1955.

Joe Albanese had such a short major league career that there seem to be no baseball cards of him.  This is what an Albanese card might have looked like, using the format from another Washington Senators baseball card and a photo of him playing for the Senators in 1958.

I had to include him because of this photo by LIFE photographer George Silk of Albanese in spring training for the Boston Red Sox in 1956.  He got injured in spring training and went back to the minor leagues, and in 1958 the Red Sox traded him to the Washington Senators, where he played part of one season.

Karl Spooner was a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

LIFE photographer Grey Villet caught Spooner in the locker room during the 1955 World Series.

Roger Craig pitched for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies.  This is a baseball card from when he was with the Dodgers.

Here he is in the locker room in 1956 when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, in a photo by LIFE photographer George Silk.

Roy Campanella was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues.  His playing career ended in 1958 when he was paralyzed in an auto accident.

LIFE's George Silk photographed him getting into a whirlpool bath in 1956.

Sandy Amoros was a Cuban left fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which later became the LA Dodgers.

Here's LIFE Photographer John Dominis' locker room portrait of him in Brooklyn in 1955.

Stan Musial, considered one of baseball's greatest hitters, played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1941 to 1963 with time out serving in the Navy during World War II.

I don't have any nude photos of him, but this 1952 locker room photo by LIFE photographer Francis Miller doesn't leave much to the imagination.

We end with a two-for-one.  Mel Ott was one of baseball's most feared sluggers in the early 20th century.  He was signed by the New York Giants in 1926 as a 16-year-old right out of high school, and he played with the Giants for the rest of his career, ending in 1947.

Johnny McCarthy was Mel Ott's teammate on the New York Giants from 1936 to 1941, playing first base.

This uncredited photo shows Mel Ott, at left, and Johnny McCarthy enjoying a shower together.  Full disclosure: the photo cut off the end of Ott's butt, which I have restored to a reasonable approximation.

Yes, I know that a baseball card never shows two players, but I'm just having fun.

The Naked Farmer - Part 17

Victoria

We continue our series of photos posted by the Naked Farmer, Ben Brooksby, a young Australian farmer who takes and posts photos of naked Australian farmers on social media sites.  The naked photos are to get people's attention, and his message is to encourage people with mental health issues like suicidal thoughts to talk about it with someone and not to hide it away.  Ben himself had suffered from panic attacks in school.

People also send Ben naked photos of themselves from all over Australia.  Today we feature more photos from the state of Victoria.  The photo above was called "Fresh cuts for the week" in Toolamba.

We have a bonus photo from the same guys, called "Happy Naked Gardening Day."  By the way, Naked Gardening Day is the first Saturday in May, if you want to mark your calendar.

This photo is called Grampians.  Grampians is a rural region to the northwest of Melbourne, not to be confused with Grampians National Park, which is a mountainous park in the region.

Here's John Howard posing with the Twelve Apostles off the Great Ocean Road in Victoria.  The Twelve Apostles consisted of nine limestone formations (so they should have been the Nine Apostles) until one of them collapsed and washed away in 2005 (so now they should be the Eight Apostles).

A man and his horses in Murrindindi.  I love Australian place names.

A bunch of students from Marcus Oldham College with saws, chainsaws, and a sign that they apparently chopped off to prove that they're woodcutters.

This photo was labeled "Mates, Longerenong."  I think they're students at Longerenong College.  Don't blame the Naked Farmer for the concealment of frontal nudity in these photos.  He posts them on Facebook, which bans frontal nudity.

We end with a photo labeled "Mount Disappointment," but I'm not disappointed with this view.

Hiking - Part 39

Mountain Tops

Mountain summits are always compelling destinations for a hike.  Here's a guy on Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, the highest point in the U.S. east of the Mississippi.

This is Buddy on a mountain in Georgia.

Some mountains have nice views, like this one overlooking Phoenix, Arizona ...

and this one in the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming (which, by the way, is where the story Brokeback Mountain is set).

This unnamed summit doesn't have much of a view, other than some fall foliage in the background, but maybe you weren't looking at the background.

This is the summit of Scafell Pike, England.  At 3209 feet, it's England's highest mountain.

This is Glenn on the summit of Ben Lomond, Scotland's highest peak at 3196 feet.  Did you know that the Scottish Highlands and the Appalachian Mountains were once part of the same mountain range, before the Atlantic Ocean split open and divided them 130 million years ago?  The Atlantic is still getting wider by an inch or two a year.

Roy's Peak, at 5177 feet, provides a beautiful view of Lake Wanaka, New Zealand.

Mont Salève overlooks Geneva, Switzerland.  It's 4524 feet high, not as high as the snow-covered Alps in the distance.

Here's Christian on the summit of Antecim, 8612 feet, with France's Mont Blanc in the distance, the highest mountain in the Alps at 15,773 feet.

But those are all foothills compared to the Himalayas.  Here are Ivan Serra and a friend on top of Kala Patthar mountain, 18,519 feet high, looking across at Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth.  Everest was recently re-measured at 8849 meters (29,032 feet).  

Above is famous English climber George Mallory (at right), naked at Everest base camp in 1922.  At that time, many expeditions had attempted Everest, but no one had yet reached the summit.  Mallory is the climber who, when he was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, replied, "Because it's there."

In another Everest attempt in 1924, Mallory disappeared after being engulfed by a blizzard near the summit.  75 years later, his body was found below a ridge close to the summit.  It is not known whether Mallory actually reached the summit, 29 years before Edmund Hillary.

In 1953, Edmund Hillary (above) and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men known to have reached the summit of Mt. Everest.  Hillary is also the first man known to have pissed on the summit of Mt. Everest.  In his autobiography, he relates how, before the final ascent, he and Tenzing consumed copious quantities of lemon drink to avoid dehydration during the climb, and "we arrived on top with full bladders.  Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it."

In 2006, Sherpa climber Lakpa Tharke became the first man to get naked on the summit of Mt. Everest.  He stayed naked for 3 minutes in subzero weather while his fellow climbers took pictures for the Guinness Book of World Records, but unfortunately, the photos have not been publicly released.

But we do have a photo of Polish climber Mariusz Kubielas on the west ridge of Everest, which appeared on the cover of a 1996 Polish climbing magazine, above.  The uncensored frontal nudity caused a scandal in Poland, where Kubielas was a city councilman at the time.

Next time: more Mountain Tops.