Some of the negatives of boudoir photographer Jean Agélou have survived. These glass plate negatives were used to print postcards with erotic images. Studying the negatives provides interesting information about the photographer’s working methods and his legacy.
Agélou’s negatives exist in the 9 x 14 cm format, which was used for printing postcards in the same format. There are also negatives with a size of 13 x 18 cm. This format was used for images that were published in the erotic magazine L’Étude Académique. The 13 x 18 cm negative below was used for L’Étude Académique, but after publishing in the magazine, frame lines, serial number and initials were scratched in the negative so that it could be used to create a smaller 9 x 14 cm postcard.
After Agélou’s death, his negatives were sold1. The negative below was originally used for printing a JA Série 068 postcard, but the number and JA initials were removed and a new number (24) is added. The negative was probably used by another publisher who bought the negatives and published new series.
Negatives of Agélou’s stereoviews have not yet been discovered. It is unknown whether these negatives have survived.
References
- Le Courrier (9-12-1921), p. 4. ↩︎
Jean Agélou
Jean Agélou (1878–1921) was a French photographer and publisher of erotic postcards and stereoviews during La Belle Époque. Little is known about his life, and no letters or portraits are known of him. The first nude photos that can be attributed with certainty to him were published in the magazine L’Étude Académique in 1905. The photos that can be linked with certainty to the photographer bear the initials or marks JA, GP, Léo and Lydia. From 1913, postcards were also published with the initials GA, which referred to Jean’s younger brother Georges Agélou (1882–1921), who joined his brother’s publishing company. Jean’s photographs are of a high technical and artistic quality. The decorations and romantic backgrounds create an intimate atmosphere and can today be classified as boudoir photography.
The complete story of Jean Agélou