U.S. Recruits, Post World War II
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Today's photos are from a photo set taken in 1948 by LIFE photographer Michael Rougier called "Air Base Inductees." The Air Force had been established as a separate military branch the year before. Previously, it was the Army Air Corps.
Above, a towel-clad recruit enters the room labeled Physical Check Up, where we see another recruit being examined without his towel.
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Another recruit enters the Physical Check Up room sans towel. It's too dark to see much, but there's something between his legs.
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Some towel-clad recruits wait their turn to shower.
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A view of some recruits showering.
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And some more recruits showering. Don't drop the soap!
Like most of the 4 million photos in the LIFE archive, these photos were never published in LIFE magazine.
9 comments:
Even though these photos were never actually published, the LIFE photographers sure had complete access to the totally nude recruits. A few of them may have wondered, "Why is this guy taking my picture!"
Nice butts!
Are the archives scanned from negatives or paper photos?
A photographer with fixed lens may take a "scene" in order to capture the face of a guy and just enlarge the negative so that the printed photo shows only the guy's upper body.
If scanned from negatives, one should see "raw" photos that are not cropped, but I would assume that actual prints would have been cropped to make t possible to be published.
@Anon - I do not know whether the LIFE archive was scanned from negatives or photos. Any cropping was done by the editors of LIFE, not the photographer. I have seen a few cases where an uncropped photo in the LIFE photo archive was published in a cropped form. My conclusion is that all the photos in the archive are uncropped.
If you go to the LIFE photo archive https://artsandculture.google.com/search/entity?p=life-photo-collection and type "air base inductees" in the search field, you will see the complete set of 163 photos, of which I selected the 5 that show nudity.
What if I *want* to "drop the soap"? ;-)
Young men at their physical peak. A wonderful thing to see them naked.
Ah for the good old days of unashamed male nudity!
Thanks for the link to the LIFE archives. I had done a search years ago but while I had found some interesting historical images, nothing of interrest in tersm of locker room stuff :-) I will attempt once more with this URL.
#3 has lots soap on the floor.....
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