The Ziegfeld Girls – Vintage Nudes by Alfred Cheney Johnston
nudeorama | September 14, 2011
In 1907 Florenz Ziegfeld debuted his Ziegfeld Follies, an elaborate Broadway production that was part vaudeville, part theatrical variety show, and part chorus girl revue. The show itself was massively popular, had a long run of success (until 1931), and featured many famous performers of the era: W.C. Fields, Ed Wynn, and Will Rogers, to name just a few.
But the most enduring image from the show was the inimitable Ziegfeld Girl, dancers in Ziegfeld’s famous chorus line. These days they’re best known from Alfred Cheney Johnston’s excellent nude photographs taken throughout the 1920s. It’s an unmistakable style – elegant yet with an undercurrent of kitsch, ornate yet spartan, and meticulously composed without losing a sense of spontaneity in both pose and expression. And naked!
Costumes were created by the designer and illustrator Erté – heavy on the Art Deco look, alternately elaborate and scanty but more frequently both. The Ziegfeld Girls themselves were quite lovely, kind of a mixture of the “modern” flapper and classical nudes of the 1800s. IMO some of the more beautiful and distinctive nude photographs of the 20th century…
