Erotic Rare 1920 Nude Pictorialist Nitrate Camera Negative Edwin Bower Hesser NR

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Thanks to all our eBay bidders! We are honored to be your one-stop, 5-star source for vintage pin up, pulp magazines, original illustration art, decorative collectibles and ephemera with a wide and always changed assortment of antique and vintage items from the Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern eras. All items are 100% guaranteed to be original, vintage, and as described. Please feel free to contact us with any and all questions about the items and our policies and please take a moment to peruse our other great eBay listings. All sell no reserve!ITEM: A spirited vintage and original, one of a kind large format C. 1920s to early 30s nitrate camera negative photograph of a provocative nude model, wrapped in a silk shawl. A masterful erotic work by Edwin Bower Hesser, who was an important American photographer who published his own artist's model magazines ostensibly for the "aspiring art student..." This photograph comes from an important small collection recently acquired by GrapefruitMoonGallery of Hesser's archived camera negatives that were compiled in the 1970s by a collector named Clarence Koch who was planning a folio book of these images, though that project appears to never have been completed. Additionally, some images were used by John Kobal in the Alfred A. Knopf book "The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers." Some of these were archived with a mailing envelope from the 1930s sent to Wehman Bros., a photograph publishing house that found placement of Hesser's images in various period art deco girlie magazine titles of the era.The image shown below is a positive converted scan taken with our epson scanner, you are bidding on the original one of a kind first generation nitrate camera negative.2 positive photographic impressions from the 1970s are included with the original 1920s camera negative.Negative measures 6 1/4" x 8 1/4"CONDITION: Fine condition a sharp & very nice one of a kind original first generation camera negative. There is one some light handling / storage wear and a couple of small blemish imperfections in this the original first generation nitrate camera negative.Edwin Bower Hesser (1893 -- 1962)Biography By: David S. ShieldsHesser belonged to the generation of photographers who saw the marriage of image and performance as the future of the art. Born in New Jersey and apprenticed in photography in New York City, Hesser became smitten with the potentials of the art form.Prior to World War I he toured northeastern theaters with J. Townsend Russell in a series of "picture readings" illustrating Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Townsend recited the poems accompanied by a string orchestra while illustrative photographs were projected on the screen. In 1913, Hesser introduced Roald Admundsen, the first man to reach the south pole, to New York audiences, presenting motion pictures to illustrate the trek. On February 3, 1915, using family money, he incorporated the Hesser Motion Picture Corporation with a capitalization of $50,000. Later in the year, he was in Atlanta opening the Hesser School For Motion Picture Acting.With America's entry into World War I, Hesser joined the U. S. Army Signal corps with the rank of Captain and oversaw land photography. While in the service a scenario composed by Hesser, "The Freedom of the World," was made in 1918 into a semi-documentary feature film by Goldwyn. After the armistice, Hesser decommissioned, set up a photographic studio in Manhattan employing as his assistant a talented Italian, Nino Vayana, to oversee production. He was drawn to the world of movies and worked as a contract photographer for numbers of silent stars based in New York, particularly Norma Talmadge, Irene Castle, and Marion Davies. A fire in 1922 destroyed his production facilities and his stock of early negatives. He began to make regular trips to the West Coast for photographic sessions with Hollywood stars, and finally moved his base of operations to there.By 1923 he realized that the real money in phot... read more

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