French Pin-Ups

Japanese editor and art director Makoto Orui has devoted himself to collecting photographs once published in France’s numerous independent erotic magazines of the 1950s and ’60s. Assembled here in all their subtle and titillating power, these images of pin-up girls still hold an alluring aura in their natural, imperfect beauty and retro charm.

Plucked from the pages of nude and glamour magazines, the often amateurish nudes posed in all kinds of indoor and outdoor settings can be seen as precursors to the shifting societal norms, more open sexual expression, and women’s empowerment that would develop in later decades.