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 six 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 Yale freshman Robert Coleman Child III on Oct. 12, 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 Yale freshman John C. Leinenweber on Oct. 7, 1953.
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 Yale freshman Carl Alfred Peterson on Oct. 14, 1953.
This is Yale freshman H. P. on Oct. 9, 1953.
This is Yale freshman Richard Wilkes Foxwell on Feb. 14, 1950.
Prior to 1952, Yale posture photos were just a profile view.
This is Yale freshman G. Y. on Feb. 16, 1950.
Note: some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos. If you think I should not publish them, please don't comment to that effect. Too much time and space has been taken up on the subject. We can agree to disagree. If you don't like it, go to some other blog. Here is my position:
1. 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.
2. To protect the privacy of the students, I redact the names of students who may still be alive. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
12 comments:
At first, I found these pictures disturbing. But now that I understand the reason for taking them, it no longer bothers me. And, as someone pointed out, being naked in all-male situations back then caused no discomfort to the subjects.
Thanks for publishing them. They definitely relate to our changing attitudes about nudity.
I applaud you for publishing these, and your position regarding the subject. Thank you.
Please keep publishing these photos. Nothing wrong with male nudity. The times were different 60-70 years ago. Not fair to judge what was acceptable then with current-day standards. I've never been a big fan of censorship.
I do not support your reasons.
Thank you so much for sharing these student posture pictures. I think they are all handsome in the pictures especially those with front views taken. Please continue posting and hoping to see more in the future.
In my fantasy world, if I ran an all-male university, I would want to see what each new student looked like completely nude. To know that this fantasy actually existed at Yale and other all-male Ivy League universities is a huge turn-on. Thanks for publishing these nude photos.
3rd guy (Peterson) is ineresting. Frontal view appear he is circumcised, but when you look at side view, you see he is foreskinned, and then when you look back at frontal, yu can almost see where the foreskin ends. (The lighting makes the skin over glans appear lighter than skin on shaft, giving illusion, especially as there is no contract between skin and tip of glans that shows.). Am curious if the people who worked these pictures to make statistics or whatever had very clear photographs or worked with the same level of detail/contrast from B&W photographs.
I would have enjoyed observing the whole process of these photo sessions with the new students, with dozens of fit young men arriving at the gymnasium, removing all their clothes, lining up to get the adhesive pins attached to their bodies, walking down corridors to have the actual photos taken, all in clear view of staff, other students, anyone who just happened to be in the building, and so forth. A true "livestock show" of young male flesh, a process repeated year after year.
I wonder if any of them got an erection while being filmed for the posture photo
Love the nudity! Thank you!
At that age, for me a wind already had a boner effect
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