In order to embark on "my" pin-up journey, I first did some research on the Internet to find out what is commonly understood by pin-up. Originally, pin-up pictures are those that show women in erotic poses and can be pinned to the wall. Well, basically you can pin any picture to the wall. So what is so special, so different about these pictures?

These pictures are often used as calendar pictures and/or printed as double-sided or even large-format, fold-out posters.

Before these images were defined as an art form in their own right in the 1980s, they were seen as illustrations. They were used for dime novels and magazine covers. According to Wikipedia, even serious magazines like the Times used pin-up images as covers. So far I have not found any. The postcards of the Austrian painter and illustrator, Raphael Kirchner, in the youth and pin-up style can be seen as an early type of this art form. Pin-up, seen as everyday art, was recognized by a broad section of the population from the 1920s to the 1970s. Through a multitude of postcards, magazine titles, advertising posters, but also on various objects, these depictions were quite suitable as mass effective war propaganda. The rather erotic images were intended to push and spur people on to peak performance.

Millions of these pin-up girls populated the lockers of US soldiers during the Second World War. Frank Powolny, a 20th Century Fox photographer, photographed Betty Grable in 1943 as a pin-up girl in swimwear, looking over her shoulder, a mischievous smile on her face. This picture is said to have been the most popular of its kind and iconographic for the time. The film "Pin up Girl", shot by 20th Century-Fox in 1944, benefited from the fame of this picture and its model.
During the Second World War, but also during the Korean War, the pin-up scene was given a new direction through "nose art". The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) liked to paint their fighter planes with pin-up girls as well as comic figures and martial allegories. The design of these ladies was often coordinated with the character that the soldiers ascribed to their meshes. Sometimes the meshes were named after the ladies whose likenesses served as models. Artistically talented members of the USAAF also created their own pictures, which found a new canvas on the back of their flight jackets in order to emphasize their affiliation to "their" airman. The "Memphis Belle" is the most famous aircraft with a pin-up identity. It was a Boeing B-17 bomber of the 8th US Air Fleet, which bombed a total of 25 targets in Germany and occupied France in 1942 and 1943.

Even though the classic pin-up girls have largely disappeared, "nose art" is still widespread today, mainly among units on combat missions.

My picture "Fly higer - Dream bigger" is one of my first attempts to create a "typical" pin-up picture with DAZ Studio. It is inspired by Dr. Strangelove - or how I learned to love the bomb, 1964 (Stanley Kubrick transforms the threat of nuclear war in the 1960s into a grotesque comedy. The horror only becomes apparent in the humorous exaggeration) and is by no means a particularly creative achievement of its own, but it is a picture on the way to engaging with this genre and for this reason I like it.
Pin-up pictures usually show pretty, young women in various, mostly erotic poses. They usually have sentimental, narrative, romantic or patriotic components. The subject is often everyday scenes in which minor misadventures are shown, often with a clear erotic touch. Even if seemingly deep sensual insights are granted, nothing is clearly shown, everything is left to the imagination of the respective viewer. The ladies are usually lightly clothed and only very rarely are they completely or partially naked.

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In 1951, the Austrian magazine Cocktail published a highly critical review of the pin-up and Hollywood scene. The eroticizing and sexualizing portrayal of these women was divided into two types of women, the US pin-up girls and the Hollywood starlets. While the starlets were considered to have a certain assertiveness and self-confidence in addition to their beauty, the pin-up girls were perceived as sophisticatedly dressed, but otherwise rather hollow and superficial. Both types of women were believed to be able to attract rich men with the help of their openly flaunted beauty, but tended to be denied the skills needed for a down-to-earth, normal marriage. If you want to delve deeper into this socio-critical topic about the new roles of women in the post-war years, you can find out more in the above-mentioned article in Cocktail and the subsequent review 2023 by Clio-online.

I am more impressed or inspired by the more recent pictures by photographer Dr. Yvonne Sophie Thöne. She
has a doctorate in Old Testament studies, studied theology and has made fashion and portrait photography her hobby since 2018. She has noticed that the women in older and classic pin-up depictions are often portrayed as somewhat clumsy and innocent, something that contradicts today's more feminist image of women. However, the fascination of these vintage images still exists, which I can definitely confirm. Today's women can be anything: nuclear physicists, judges, doctors, firefighters, craftswomen, housewives, bakers and much more. Dr. Yvonnen Sophie Thöne lets women slip into one of these roles in front of the camera, just the way the woman likes it and feels comfortable. Together with the women, she wants to show that it is possible to see life in a funny way and laugh about it. The lightness and colorfulness, the humor that these pictures radiate obviously make pin-up pictures so popular today.
During her 10 years as a teacher and researcher, she has read many passages in the Old Testament about love, physicality, hatred, loyalty and the really lively themes of life. She has discovered that the Bible was not necessarily hostile to the body and lust in earlier times, but that this attitude has only been interpreted and unfortunately cemented in this way over the years.
She photographs a wide variety of women in bold, colorful and erotic poses. They are physically completely different. In addition to young, slim women, there are older women, rounder bellies, small and large breasts, lots of tattoos and no tattoos. She simply shows a complete cross-section of "fair femininity", who are clearly living their dream of being a glamorous girl for a moment in front of the camera with joy and self-confidence. The naturalness, colorfulness, eroticism, wit and humor appeal to me, fascinate me and have inspired me to create my own pin-ups with the help of DAZ Studio. The different styles such as rockabilly or retro punk as well as the proximity to burlesque also offer 1001 attractions and ideas.

I don't have an exact idea, I just let myself be inspired and see where this path takes me .....
Samara Blue, Krefeld in December 2023

Sources:

Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up 

Die Wahrheit über die Pin-up-Girls (Cocktail, 1951) | Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (clio-online.de)

Von Curvy, Pin-up & Burlesque: Diese Frau versteht es Kurven in Szene zu setzen - PlusPerfekt