Estonian Photos
Here are ten more men from the collection of Estonian photos.
These photos are from a museum of anthropology in Estonia. The museum provides no information about the photos.
Could these be university posture photos, like the Yale posture photos that I post from time to time? It seems unlikely. The fact that many of the young men have hands and faces that are either dirty, like coal miners, or deeply tanned, like farm workers, suggests that these are not students.
By the way, there are no coal mines in Estonia, but there is oil shale mining, which makes the workers just as dirty.
Most of the photos show two men from the front, rear and side, but for #663 and #664, the side photo is missing.
These photos could be downloaded in extremely high resolution, such as the one above, but those downloads took so long (2 minutes each) that I only did it for a few photos. Click on the photo to see the larger image.
I picked this one because he is number 666 – the Biblical "number of the beast" that some religious fanatics associate with the Devil. This guy doesn't look like the Devil to me. And by the way, he hurt his foot.
My guess is that these are military recruits, photographed shortly after entering military service. That would make these similar to nude photos of U.S. Army and Navy recruits in the 1940s.
Our #666 is probably just a young guy who got drafted.
Those U.S. Army and Navy photos were not taken to find posture problems, but to evaluate the results of physical training on the recruits' physiques.
When were these photos taken? We don't know, but my assumption is that they were taken between World War I and World War II, i.e. between 1918 and 1945. During that interval, Estonia was an independent nation and would have had an independent military.
For #667 and #668, the side view is also missing.
Before World War I, Estonia was part of the Imperial Russian empire, and after World War II it was part of the Soviet Union. Estonia finally became independent again in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Any official Russian military photos taken before 1918 or after 1945 would probably have been stored in Russia, not Estonia, so they would not have ended up in an Estonian museum. That's why I'm guessing these photos date from between 1918 and 1945.
But in the absence of any solid information, all we can do is enjoy these views of young Estonian men.
15 comments:
They all seem to have tanned faces, but are pale everywhere else. And none of them looks healthy.
absolutely true!
Coal miners would be my guess. They appear none too comfortable about having their photos taken in the nude.
Here is the museum link
https://www.muis.ee/museaalview/3741106
Many many thnks for the link. Managed to do a search and found a whole bunch of them, and not all are "military" stule as you have posted so far, many have normal hair and clan bodies. But you are correct, the .tif versions take forever to download ! I have far more respect for the daily posting you make because it wasnt easy to learn Estonian to navigate the site ! (couldn't get Mr google to translate for some teason) :-)
The search keyword I used: Füüsilise antropoloogia pildistus
(Otsi = search) .
Addendum: have continued to look at the images from Estonia.
They are from Estonian Institute of Anatomy who donated the negatives to a museum for preservation.
(So ethically, if such pictures taken to do studies on anatomy are OK to be made public, then I guess the Yale ones would likely fall under the same category.)
So far, I have noticed 3 settings. Initial pictures are 1 person per pic, frontal only in a room. Then one person only, frontal only in a different room with books against wall. Then same with books covered with some sort of black fabric.
They it starts to have some side views as well as frontal. And then it gets to a wider background with 2 subjects per picture, often with front, side and back.
For all the subjects, there is that "spiral binder" on on the black background with height marks behind it, just like in the pictures you have posted (which are much further along in the collection ( I am in the roughly 170 subject numbers, your last pictures were close to 800).
So, so far, it appears they are all from the same project. So unlikely to be a military thing. Though many subjects do have a crew cut, but not all. I'll see how that changes as I progress. And so far, have only seen one subject with "tanned" face and hands, the rest are all white.
What gets my curiosity is that there is a fairlly high percentage of circumcised males, (though some are actually uncut with retracted foreskin). Checked with Mr Google, and there were a couple thousand Jewish persons in Estonia so very very small overall percentage of population prior to WWII. And the percentage of males with short foreskins that only cover part of glans is as WAS documented in books up to mid 1970s, and different than what one sees in countries where circumcision stopped and parents told to not retact foreskins and even uncut has long foreskin. (foreskin length has been strong curiosity since I was 10 and told my foreskin was too long).
Also: very few have chest hair, so they were targetting a fairly specific age at end of puberty and before chest hair sprouts. Another possibility is that those were recruits for army and taken just as they were initially processed.
@Anonymous - Yes, the initial photos have different formats, such as one guy per photo, but then they settled on the format of two guys per photo, viewed front, side, and rear. I have been showing the photos in reverse order (starting with the 700s), and all the later photos are in that format.
If you can find anything more about the project that produced these photos, please let me know. You can send me a private email at unashamedmale@gmail.com. Because of the uniform young age of the subjects, and the large number of them, I am still assuming that they are army recruits being initially processed, but again, that's just a guess.
Technique black and white photography
Material glass
Dimensions negative format: 1.0 100 x 150 mm
Glass plates started in 1800s. The dry glass plates started in 1871. Prior to that, the photographer had to prepare a solution, dip the glass in solution, then take piucture AND develop it before the soludion had time to dry. (so not feasible for large number of photographs done in sequence). The collodium plates were also far less sensitive requiring long exposure times. I strongly suspect this collection from Estonia is from the dry plate era.
Glass plates started to fall out of use by 1920s when film became available, but uses in specialized areas remained. (film didn't maintain perfect proportion as it was flexible, so for large formats, film was less quality than glass plate). Some uses persisted till the 1970s in scientific applications.
The crew cut of MOST sujects (but not all) would point to military, but an anatomy study might want such cuts if they are to measure size of head. If this was driven by institute of anatomy, it is possible that they got the military to furnish subjects and that would have worked with any of the military "flavours" (Estonian, Soviet, German) controlling military at the time. So perhaps the glass plate is a better "timer" of when they were taken.
Associated Press says they stopped using glass plates for news reporting circa 1934. Have to wonder if this series would date to prior WW-I.
It seems that preservation of glass plates is a big thing and it was great of that musuum to go through the time consuming exercise to photograph every plate individually (as opposed to feeding a film strip into an automated film scanner).
BTW, in the earlier pictures, the setup isn't next to some books piled up on floor, it is a cord of wood (likely to feed a fireplace). This cord was lated covered by black cloth before they moved to the 2 person setup.
BTW, there are a few older men in there. So it wasn't exclusively young men.
257-258 (UAMF474-341F )
259-260 344F both men have mustaches. May help date era if one is a mustache expert :-)
On hair: of those with crew cuts, it is at various stages of growth, not all "freshly done", so this isn't a series of pictures done when subject is onboarded and given first crew cut just before picture taken. If these are military, likely "loaned" by military during service hence people are ar different times between their haircuts.
BTW, just noticed: on the series taken next to cord of wood and some form of window, the height of cord of wood varies
On the black faces: I have seen a two-some where guy on left has white face, and guy on right has darker face (and darker wrist/hands). I was thinking perhaps lights or flash was not aimed right and faces suddently got darker. But that photograph dismissed that theory. I can only think that this was tan, and perhaps the lights were blue and thus didn't reflect well on red faces which would exagerate the tan, or perhaps the film emulsion was less sensitive to red (again exagerating tan).
More on the dark faces: early photographic film was orthochromatic, which means that it was more sensitive to certain colours or not sensitive at all to certain colours. (think photo paper made to be insensitive to red so you can work with red light in darkroom).
(by default, silver halide is like that).
Panchromatic film (sensitive to all colours) became available in very early 1900 but its high cost meant it was a progressivce adoption.
HOWEVER: a good percentage of men have short foreskins, many with fully exposed glans (and some might be circumcised). If the head above the shoulders is darker than normal because of tan exagerated by film being less sensitive to red, then a naked glans should be equally as dark, and that is not the case in those pictures.
@Anonymous - Thank you for your observation that the photos were from glass plates, not film, one of the very few facts that the museum provides about the photos. I did a little research and found that glass plate photography was being still used in Estonia into the 1930s, and even the 1950s in one case. But there is a strong possibility that the dates of the photos might be earlier than I had thought. I talk about this in my next post of Estonian photos, scheduled for Nov. 8.
Found more info:
https://et-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Vikipeedia:GLAM/F%C3%BC%C3%BCsiline_antropoloogia_Tartu_%C3%9Clikoolis?_x_tr_sl=et&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
These were taken in "early 20th century".
There appears to have been fascination on whether Estonians were of Mongolian origin. And there was focus on shape/size of head and chest, which would explain the crew cuts on heads and very few males having any chest hair.
But still no info on actual dates and how they obtained subjects.
I've finished going through the images. Downloaded those of interest for me (incomplete foreskin or no foreskin). Thinking of doing statistics on foreskin length. Back in the 1970s, I had read a book with stats on foreskin length that matched some of what I saw, whereas today's younger men born after 1980 that are almost all uncut here (Québec) a;; sport long foreskins. My theory is when parents told by anti cirers there is no need to retract/wash foreskin on young son, it causes phimosis to last longer and that means that every childhood erection causes foreskin to stretch in length since it can't retract as penis becomes longer, so that results in longer foreskin.
Still very curious on whether the sample of young men in this Estonian series is random, of if they sourced them from miitary, some educational institution or other. But there was definitely a requirement to have crew cut on the head above shoulders.
The male form!!!!
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