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Jean Agélou
Julian Mandel
Louis Amédée Mante

Most of the photographers of erotic (French) postcards worked anonymous, to avoid public discussion and deteriorating their reputation as reknown portrait photographers or getting into conflict with current law. Nevertheless a few names are well known, such as Jean Agélou, one of the most productive photographers for erotic postcards. Besides him are to be mentioned Louis Amédée Mante (A. M. Patent), Julian Mandel, Charles Reutlinger, Paul Nadar, Lucien Walery, Grundworth, Jacques Biederer, in Italy Guglielmo Marconi and Guglielmo Plüschow, and in Germany Rudolf Franz Lehnert & Ernst Heinrich Landrock with their exotic oriental nude portraits.

In contrary to the portrait postcards i.e. by Leopold Reutlinger and due to showing semi-nude and nude models, the erotic postcards were published not with the full name of the photographer, but only with initials like JA, JR, GA, GP. The only exception is Julian Mandel. Most of his work is signed "J. Mandel", thus creating discussion if his name was just a pseudonym. Some of Agélou's photographs got published under different initials, so they can only be attributed to his work according to the photographic style, the models, or the studio props.

Available information about photographers of erotic postcards is still scarce. One of the few biographic books is about Jean Agélou by Christian Bourdon and Jean Pierre Bourgeron, so far published only in French language. This biography is a highly recommended book about this topic.
Another interesting book is "Mantochromes / Photographies" by Jacqueline Millet about the collaboration of Louis-Amédée Mante and Edmond Goldschmidt.
Other great monographs are "Les Reutlinger" by Jean-Pierre Bourgeron about Reutlinger and "Les Grands Maitres de la Photo No. 5 - Nadar" about Felix Nadar. We also recommend the very nicely designed "French Postcards" by Martin Stevens and the book by Ferrucio Farina. There are also a few good publications on Oriental erotic photography by Lehnert & Landrock and Jean Geiser.

See our book section for more detailed information.

 

Websites:


Jean Agélou

 

Mante - Goldschmidt

 

References:

 

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