A recent comment about the French photographer Jeanloup Sieff (1933 – 2000) led me to explore his work further and I was rather glad I did.
Sieff was born in Paris to parents of Polish origin. He recalled his holidays in the Polish winter resort of Zakopane as a period when photographing newly met girls got him hooked on photography. In 1956 he began doing fashion shoots, working all over Europe. He settled in New York for a number of years in the 1960s, where he worked for Esquire, Glamour, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, becoming extremely popular in America.
An online bio says that:
His pictures were always inimitably his own, whatever their subject. Brooding black and whites, always exquisitely printed, became his trademark style. Yet in everything he did, he managed to instil a sense of psychological upset or doubt within the picture.
As he grew older, he increasingly concentrated on nudes. 1998 saw the publication of his book Derrieres – “an ode to the bottom – a photographic tribute to 93 behinds, – in all their apple-cheeked glory.” One shot was a spanking image of sorts (see top).
A dandy all his life, early risers in Paris grew used to the long haired and elegant man driving his tremendously stylish, vintage English sports car for an early breakfast in the St Germain district. Almost everybody knows a picture or two of Sieff’s, even if they perhaps don’t know that the image is his – and that is an extraordinary legacy.
This gallery of photographs by Sieff is hosted on Imagevenue:
The Spank Statement 
‘Ode to the bottom’ – how perfect would that be on my gravestone.
I’ve worshipped female buttocks since I was a small boy, taken into the dressing rooms of British pantomime shows by my auntie who was a ‘hoofer’ in the chorus line. They paid no attention to the small boy whose head was on a level to the lovely, smooth bottoms of the chorus girls quickly changing costumes, sometimes getting buffered from one bum to another, so tight was dressing room space.
If only they knew…I was like that non-descript recording character in the modern novel whose name I can never remember. Perhaps some other pervert can help out there 🙂
FJ
Some very colourful early memories there, Jon. Did you ever witness a spanking in a pantomime show?
I wonder if this photographer had some similar formative triggers that turned him onto the delights of the derriere. My favourite in this set by the way is 009 – a most unusual pose that shows off the roundness of both buttocks beautifully.
‘The Tin Drum’ by Gunther Grass! I was ‘Oskar’, the dwarf who recorded all the funny shit that went on, unnoticed by the people around me.
To reply to Valdor’s question, I think there were a couple of ‘comedy’ spankings by Dame Grundy or other. You remember those hammy British pantos. But they didn’t register with me.
FJ
So basically, even as a kid you were already a pervy voyeur! 🙂
Bien sur, mon vieux. I was a bit young to do anything about it, but even as a daft kid I knew what ‘buttock heaven’ was all about.
FJ