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“August 19th is World Photography Day,” proclaims the holiday’s official site, “a day for photographers across the planet to celebrate their passion for photography. Sounds great! But what do you DO on World Photo Day?" How about writing a blog?

“In a world where millions of pictures are uploaded every minute,” the organizers explain, “World Photo Day can help to open your eyes to the possibilities of photography, and enable you to show us the world as you see it.” For Sleuth, seven has always been his lucky number!

“No matter who you are, where you are or what equipment and skills you have, Photography Day should inspire people across the planet to share their world with the world!” Ladies, in the Sleuthian world, your e•mission is straight forward:

“The date behind World Photography Day originates from the invention of the Daguerreotype, a photographic process developed by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre in 1837,” reveals a camera historian. “On August 19, 1839, the French government purchased the patent from the inventors and announced the invention as a gift ‘Free to the World.’” Thanks for sharing …

“It should be noted,” the researcher adds, “that the Daguerreotype wasn’t the first photographic image. In 1826, Niépce had experimented and captured the first known permanent photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras (below left), using a process called Heliography. And, not surprisingly, the first known nude ‘exposure’ was made within weeks of the August 19, 1839 release of the patent to the public (below right)!

In the words of Wikipedia: “Since the first days of photography, the nude was a source of inspiration for those that adopted the new medium”—and thus neither rare nor well done. “Most of the early images were closely guarded or surreptitiously circulated, since the photograph captures real nudity. Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885-1971) often photographed the Ziegfeld Follies. Most of his nude images (some named, mostly anonymous) were, in fact, showgirls from the Follies.” His very first ‘Camera Buffs’—one named (dancer Carolyn Moylan at left), one anonymous (below right)—posed using the legendary lensman’s equipment.

Johnston’s contemporary, Imogen Cunningham, became the first female to openly photograph nudes … with her earliest ever selected for public exhibition in 1929. Still working at age 90, Imogen was captured in a famous 1974 photograph “encountering nude model Twinka Thiebaud in Yosemite National Park” (below left). The shot “was inspired by Thomas Hart Benton’s 1938 painting Persephone, which portrays a voyeur observing a nude woman reclining against a tree, who had been bathing in a stream.”

Thiebaud went on to become ‘The Pattie Boyd of Photography’ … inspiring “the most important photographers of the 20th century,” according to Wiki. “Many of the images taken of Twinka are in international private collections and have been shown in galleries and museums around the world, for example the Uffizi in Florence, Italy and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. For a number of years she lived with aging erotic novelist Henry Miller in his Pacific Palisades home acting as his cook and caretaker.” As well as arranging naked threesomes by the pool (above right)!

“Nudity and sexually suggestive imagery is common in modern-day culture and widely used in advertising to help sell products,” observes an ad exec. “The imagery used typically has no connection to the product being advertised.” Not so with camera commercials ... from the Fifties to the Seventies the focus was on the flash!

Indeed the industry lens itself to double entendres about its technical terms: focal length, exposure, frame, F stop and saturation all have sexual connotations … not to mention Sleuth’s take on the vintage Box Camera:

The most famous of these was the Kodak Brownie (below left … ahem), introduced in Feb. 1900, which was all but replaced by the first instant camera, made by Polaroid, in 1948 (below right).

For the first time, the public could take intimate pictures in the privacy of the home … without having to wait or get them developed by strangers. Suddenly, sex could be recorded by everyone (below left)—which gave new meaning to the term “photo mount” (below right)!

This, of course, led to digital cameras and cell phones … yet the focus remains the same:

As humorist Mark Twain quipped: “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Perhaps still active at 88 Elliott Erwitt—“an American documentary photographer known for his black-and-white candid shots of situations within everyday settings”—put it best: “Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.” This pair of public spectacles adds some local color to Erwitt’s observation and attests to the continuing tourist popularity of Nikon cameras to capture the moment:

Nowadays paparazzi and citizen photographers insure that nothing goes uncovered …

… as Italian supermodel Mariacarla Boscono discovers upon dropping her top at Cannes.

So let’s leave it to the woman who put that city’s famed film festival on the map—and who leads off Sleuth’s list of the Top Ten ‘Camera Buffs’ for World Photography Day—to have the last word:

“A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity,” sighed Brigitte Bardot, “that will never cease looking back at you.”

Especially if it’s over exposed …

BRIGITTE BARDOT

BRIGITTE LAHAIE – perhaps the most perfect all natural French blonde since Bardot

ELIZABETH HURLEY

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI - before selfies, the shy starlet used an old-fashioned model

JANICE DICKINSON

SYLVIE GUILLEM –the leading ballerina in Paris and London who retired last year

KATE MOSS – the new ‘face’ of Nikon cameras

MARILYN MONROE – the most photographed woman ever was very well developed

And let’s conclude with two of the most famous photographers of the nude from the past half century …

DIANE ARBUS

BUNNY YEAGER

As for Sleuth, I shutter to think where I’d END up without the miracle of the camera.