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April 15, 2015

Vintage Snapshots of ‘Dangerous’ Women From Between the 1930s and 1950s

For over 25 years, New York based art collector Peter J. Cohen has been combing estate sales and flea markets collecting vernacular, or “found” photography taken in the middle part of the twentieth century.


In his collection are countless images of women of all ages in various unconventional activities for the time: there are women swigging booze out of a bottle, boxing, playing pick-up football, smoking, or shooting arrows or guns—incongruous and playful behavior, all the while often performed in lovely dresses.

What began as a side project eventually grew to a collection of more than 60,000 photographs of vivacious females during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Over 150 images of these gun-toting and cigar-smoking women were brought together to become the photography book: Snapshots Of Dangerous Women.

When asked why he chose ‘dangerous’ to describe the women for this particular collection of photos, Cohen explained, “Though many of the photos show women brandishing weapons like guns, bats, knives, or engaging in boxing or fighting, the concept was really more about the attitude they all seemed to have about them.”


















(Photos courtesy of Rizzoli USA)



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