Bunny Yeager’s Darkroom

Pinup Photography’s Golden Era

SIGNED Bunny Yeager

Petra Mason

New York. Rizzoli. 2012. First edition. Hardcover. SIGNED by Bunny Yeager on a card which is affixed to page 2 beneath Bunny Yeager's image. 9.5 x 11.5 inches. 256 pages. Very good. 

A treasure trove of pin-up girl images from photographer Bunny Yeager, celebrated for her playfully erotic photos of Bettie Page that continue to influence photography and fashion today. The only woman pin-up photographer of her day, Bunny Yeager was also a model in her own right. After winning several beauty pageants in Miami, Yeager went to photography school, and in 1955, she hit the jackpot with her shot of Bettie Page scantily clad in a Santa hat, which sold instantly to the fledgling Playboy magazine. This was the beginning of a long collaboration; her photographs of Bettie have now been featured on more magazine covers than those of Marilyn Monroe. And there are plenty  of them here: frolics at the beach, goofing in a scanty leopard-skin outfit like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and intimate boudoir shots with all the sultry looks Bettie was great with. This glamorous volume gathers more than a hundred photographs embodying the naughty girl-next-door eroticism of pin-up culture. Culled from Yeager’s extensive archive, the collection includes her most iconic shots of the legendary Bettie as well as many previously unpublished images. The endpapers are actual outtakes of a Bettie session: 24 shots. The book begins with an entire chapter on the lovely Bunny herself from her own modeling career. And this includes all of Bunny's most famous models, both iconic shots and never-before-seen outtakes. Yeager’s pioneering self-portraits and excerpts from her charming 1960s how-to manuals, plus her own interview with Bettie Page, are also featured.

Very good. Light wear to the boards. Minor soiling. Right angle crease to the lower right hand corner front board. Slight spine lean. Internally, hinges sound. Binding tight. Photographs clean and bright.

SIGNED by Bunny Yeager on a card affixed to page 2.