Beautiful Photos of Australian Models Taken by Gervais Purcell in the 1940s and ’50s

Gervais Purcell (1919-1999) was a respected Australian commercial photographer who worked from the 1940s through to the 1960s with retailers like David Jones and Hordern Bros, radio technology manufacturer Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA), swimwear manufacturer Jantzen, tourism operator Ansett Airways, and cruise ship operators P&O.

Beautiful Australian models in swimsuits taken by Gervais Purcell in the 1950s

Gervais’ camera and some of his swimwear fashion photographs were featured in the popular ANMM traveling exhibition Exposed! the story of swimwear of 2009.

This selection of photographs is a part of the 3000 images in this emerging ANMM collection donated to The Australian National Maritime Museum in 2012 by Gervais’ son Leigh Purcell. They captured portraits of beautiful Australian models in the 1940s and 1950s.

Two models posing near a beach, 1946

Woman modeling swimwear, 28 March 1947

Woman modeling a hat, 1949

Woman modeling a hat, 1949

Woman modeling a hat, 1949

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Beautiful Design Concepts of the 1970s and 1980s

The art of living beautifully, California style, is presented in this roundup of ideas from HOME, the enormously successful Sunday magazine of the Los Angeles Times. A lively, unconventional guide, ‘The Los Angeles Times California Home Book’ (1982) inspires imaginative arrangements of living spaces, inside and out, whether your home is located in California, Kansas, or Connecticut.

These beautiful images below, are extracted from the book, give a look back at design concepts of the 1970s and 1980s. It’s interesting to see how some of these concepts never go out of style and how all styles come back around whether we want them to or not.

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25 Eerie Vintage Photographs Capture Muslim Women Wearing Dark Face Veils on the Streets of Sarajevo

In Bosnia-Herzegovina the niqab is called “feredza.” During Ottoman times some Bosnian women used to wear them, before communism banned it.

A niqab is a garment of clothing that covers the face, worn by some Muslim women as a part of a particular interpretation of hijab (modest dress). According to the majority of Muslim scholars and Islamic schools of thought, face veiling is not a requirement of Islam; however a minority of Muslim scholars, particularly among the Salafi movement, assert that women are required to cover their faces in public. Those Muslim women who wear the niqab do so in places where they may encounter non-mahram (non-related) men.

These photographs were taken in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 1920s to the 1940s, when niqab used to be the norm there.

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40 Amazing Vintage Photos of Working-Class Men From the Mid-19th Century

Their occupations could be blacksmith, railway worker, stoker, iceman, butchers, carpenter, etc. These amazing vintage photos show what working-class men looked like from between the late 1840s and 1870s.

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The “Queen of Technicolor”: 40 Glamorous Photos of Rhonda Fleming in the 1940s and ’50s

Born 1923 as Marilyn Louis in Hollywood, California, retired American actress and singer Rhonda Fleming began working as a film actress while attending Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1941. She was discovered by the well-known Hollywood agent Henry Willson, who changed her name to “Rhonda Fleming”.

“It's so weird,” Fleming said later. “He stopped me crossing the street. It kinda scared me a little bit -- I was only 16 or 17. He signed me to a seven-year contract without a screen test. It was a Cinderella story, but those could happen in those days.”

Fleming acted in more than 40 films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and became renowned as one of the most glamorous actresses of her day. She was nicknamed the “Queen of Technicolor” because her fair complexion and flaming red hair photographed exceptionally well in Technicolor.

Fleming has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2007, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of Rhonda Fleming in the 1940s and 1950s.

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May 24, 1991: During Operation Solomon, the World Record for the Most Passengers on a Commercial Airplane is 1,122

Operation Solomon was a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel from May 24 to May 25, 1991. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours.

The operation set a world record for single-flight passenger load on May 24, 1991, when an El Al 747 carried 1,122 passengers to Israel (1,087 passengers were registered, but dozens of children hid in their mothers’ robes). Planners expected to fill the aircraft with 760 passengers. Because the passengers were so light, many more were squeezed in. Five babies were born aboard the planes.

The operation was overseen by the Prime Minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir. It was kept secret by military censorship. Operation Solomon was sped up with tremendous help from the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ). In 1989, the AAEJ accelerated the process of the Aliyah because Ethiopian-Israeli relations were in the right place. Susan Pollack, who was the director of the AAEJ in Addis Ababa, fought for Operation Solomon to happen sooner rather than later. Israel, who had a gradual plan for this operation, and the US were given a graphic report from Pollack that informed both countries of the terrible conditions that the Ethiopian Jews were living in.

The organization went right ahead and got transportation like buses and trucks to have the people of Gondar quickly come to Addis Ababa.To get the Jews in Addis Ababa, many of the Jews that came from Gondar had to venture hundreds of miles by car, horses, and by foot. Some had things taken by thieves on the way, and some were even killed. By December 1989, around 2,000 Ethiopian Jews made their way by foot from their village in the Gondar highlands to the capital and many more came to join them by 1991.

In order to accommodate as many people as possible, airplanes were stripped of their seats, and up to 1,122 passengers were boarded on a single plane. May 24, 1991, also happened to be a Friday which falls on Shabbat for Jews. On Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, transportation is not used. This made it easier to complete the operation. The Jewish Religious Law mentions that one can break the Sabbath traditions if it is for saving lives.

Many of the immigrants came with nothing except their clothes and cooking instruments, and were met by ambulances, with 140 frail passengers receiving medical care on the tarmac. Several pregnant women gave birth on the plane, and they and their babies were rushed to the hospital. Before Operation Solomon took place, many of the Jews there were at a high risk of infection from diseases, especially HIV. The Jews that were left behind had an even higher risk at the infection because the rate of it kept increasing. After a few months, around 20,000 Jews had made their way over. While they were there, they were struggling for basic resources like food and warmth. They thought they would see their families right away.

Between 1990 and 1999, over 39,000 Ethiopian Jews entered Israel.

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Get That Camera Away From Me!

Camera shyness is the desire to avoid being photographed or filmed. It is common for individuals who are camera-shy to fear public speaking, performing in front of an audience, and having one’s picture taken by any type of camera or by video camera. It can be a consequence of shyness itself, which can be related to low self-esteem, anxiety and fear. Shyness can be a result of social anxiety, public self-consciousness, low assertiveness, and introversion.

An individual who experiences camera shyness is often in fear of the unexpected or the unknown in social situations, causing them to avoid the camera. In a social situation that is anxiety-inducing, people tend to have behaviorial responses that prevent the situation from getting worse. According to Crozier, anxiety can be separated into three elements: cognitions, physiological responses and behavior.

An individual walking away or hiding their face is a behavioral response from camera shyness. A physiological response to camera shyness can be shaking or an increase in heart rate. A cognitive response can be how a person remembers a terrible experience with cameras, which results in fear of being photographed or filmed.

Here, below is a series of photos of people trying to avoid the camera from the mid-20th century.

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