SAM HASKINS: FIVE GIRLS
Crown Publishers, 1962.
Five Girls is a black & white Study of the Nude female Form by South African photographer Sam Haskins.
I wasn’t expecting such a small book to turn up on my doorstep; at around A5 in size it’s the littlest art book I own.
The book is split into the 5 girls who appear in it. Like most of Haskins work the girls where a combination not professional models, girls starting out in their career, street scouted, family and friends. Sam Haskins’ web blog says it was “These unusual models, although of course highly talented in their own right, helped Sam to create the unaffected sexy look that was part of his creative signature and the central theme of his artistic output.”
For anyone who knows the book Gill is probably the one you will associate with Five Girls (as well as Cowboy Kate, 1964)the most. Not only were a selection of portraits from Five girls used on The last Shadow Puppets Album cover and singles in 2008 but during the Vietnam War there are stories of Soldiers having copies of Five Girls with them, making the girls in the book and especially Gill Vietnam pinups.
The book generated a lot of fan mail in the 60s from both men and women in a time when photographing the female form was still a taboo. And I can see why, these images are both sexy and sensitive. They are ordinary women, relaxed and comfortable with their bodies. And that is the sexiest thing about Sam Haskins’ Five girls.
