Ivy League nude posture photos

The Ivy League nude posture photos were taken in the 1940s through the 1970s of all incoming freshmen at certain Ivy League and Seven Sisters colleges (as well as Swarthmore), ostensibly to gauge the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population. The photos are simple black and white images of each individual standing upright from front, back and side perspectives.[1][2] Harvard previously had its own such program from the 1880s to the 1940s.[2] The larger project was run by William Herbert Sheldon and Earnest Albert Hooton, who may have been using the data to support their theory on body types and social hierarchy. What remained of the images were transferred to the Smithsonian and most were destroyed between 1995 and 2001.[1][3] However, some photos were put up for sale on the online auction site ebay in 2020, implying that photos may still be circulating in private collections. [4]

Some photographers, such as Akira Gomi, have since used this style of nude photography as an art form.

Schools involved

See also

References
  1. "Nude Photos Are Sealed At Smithsonian". New York Times. 1995-01-21. Retrieved 2008-03-11. The Smithsonian Institution has cut off all public access to a collection of nude photographs taken of generations of college students, some of whom went on to become leaders in American culture and government. The pictures at first were taken to study posture. Later they were made by a researcher examining what he believed to be a relationship between body shape and intelligence.
  2. Ron Rosenbaum (1995-01-15). "The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-11. Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs, thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side and rear poses. Disturbing, because on closer inspection the photos looked like the record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual: sticking out from the spine of each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins.
  3. "Nude Photos of Yale Graduates Are Shredded". New York Times. 1995-01-29. Retrieved 2008-03-11. The Smithsonian Institution has destroyed nude photographs taken decades ago of Yale University students who were unaware the pictures were to be used in the pursuit of a form of science. The science has since been discredited.
  4. "Medical Ivy League Yale University Scandal Nude Posture Photo & Neg Male 1942 Bu • $211.50". PicClick. Retrieved 2021-01-21.


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