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. The Yale program predates Sheldon, and, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos were never connected to Sheldon's work.
Here are eight 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. All of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.
This is Yale freshman Edward Lee Bjornson on Oct. 22, 1949.
In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view. Prior to that, the posture photo was just a side view.
This is Yale freshman Donald Fowler Bradley on Oct. 18, 1949.
Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest. The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.
This is Yale freshman Edwin Alfred Gallun, Jr. on Oct. 17, 1949.
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 William Cranz Jones on Oct. 14, 1949.
If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.
This is Yale freshman Robert Milligan McLane on Jan. 19, 1949.
The posture photos were taken in the fall, so this photo in January was a second photo after the remedial posture sessions.
This is Yale freshman John Bertrand Monsky on Mar. 16, 1949.
Likewise, this photo in March was a second photo after remedial posture sessions.
This is Yale freshman Lewis Maxwell Karas on Oct. 19, 1949.
The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium. Nobody outside this staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.
This is Yale freshman Arthur Ronald Kelley on Oct. 18, 1949.
The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned. However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.
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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 not 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.
4 comments:
I noticed that they all seem to have a dot at their ears. Was that part of posture detection?
I wonder if they ever in their elderly years got to see how handsome they were as freshmen?
All I have from that time of my life are a few Speedo pictures.
Good work, thank you.
@Paul - In addition to the pins stuck on the back and chest, several marks were made on the photos: the mark in the ear as well as marks on the shoulder, thigh, knee and foot. I have no idea how these marks were used, but they were presumably part of the posture analysis process. None of these students got to see the photos afterwards; they were never published until now.
I like the 1953 photos better (front, side, back). I liked seeing every inch of these handsome young male students.
Since we're not allowed to complain, i guess I have to support :-)
Lets take things to the extreme and consider pictures of black slaves in chains, or even Jews at "processing" plant. It is the existence of those pictures that allow history to live on and be remembered. And it is also a way to show how social values have evolved. The mere fact that today we find such picture despicable shows how we have evolved in social values.
Showing pictures of students being photographed naked by the school for studies (or fo teh Estonia photos, a whole bunch of men from "somewhere"), or even pictures of men swimming naked in pools provides a glimpse of history and that is worth preserving.
Just because some might find the pictures difficult to accept does not mean they don't have historical values to depict student life/values back then and it shows how much such values have changed, especially for the younger generations who won't even undress in a locker room when in the past, being comfortable and unaffraid of doing so was a mark of masculinity.
Just stating that guys had to be photographed naked for anatomical studies or swim naked does not have the same impact as seeing images showing not only that it was done, but also seeing the pins on the back, or swwing facial expresison of naked men in pool etc. A picture is worth a 1000 words in this case even if by today's standards such images are unacceptable, they are important part of history and rituals done in the early/mid 20th century.
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