Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 40

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

This is Yale freshman Richard Bruce White on Oct. 12, 1953.

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 Brayton Wilbur, Jr. on Oct. 19, 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.

This is Yale freshman G.W. on Oct. 19, 1953.

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 Albert L. Williams, Jr. on Nov. 3, 1953.

If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.

This is Yale freshman Z.H. on Oct. 18, 1954.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

This is Yale freshman Robert Douglas Haller on Oct. 18, 1954.

Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.

This is Yale freshman Allan Clark Scheer on Jan. 21, 1942.

This and the following photos show only a profile view because they were taken before the 4-way view equipment was installed in 1952.

This is Yale freshman Arthur Elliot Toft on Sept. 10, 1942.

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.

This is Yale freshman William Slocum Tilghman on July 15, 1942 and Dec. 8, 1942.

It's rare to have both the first posture photo and the second, where the student failed the posture test, took remedial posture sessions, then a second photo was taken.

Normally the first photo was taken near the start of the freshman term in September or October.  In this case, the fact that the first photo is dated July 1942 indicates that he was a member of the special accelerated wartime class 1945W (W for War) where the students entered Yale in July 1942 and graduated in 1945.

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Note: some of my followers consider these photos an invasion of privacy for the students.  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.

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.