Sex Objects. An American Photodocumentary

New Hampshire: Addison House. 1977.

First edition. 275x188mm. Unpaginated, illustrated throughout. Photographic card wrappers, protected by a transparent plastic cover. In excellent condition with only a little light shelfwear to the extremities Internally very good. Signed by Kroll on the frontispiece. A nice copy of an important sociological study. Offered with an original vintage print signed by Eric Kroll on the back and from his own collection. Part of the mount is cut out to show the signature. In very good condition. The photograph is reproduced in the book where the model is identified as 'Shelley [who] worked in a nude model studio in Baltimore, Maryland. The studio also offered "nude or semi-nude wrestling or boxing"'. Kroll photographs her in a relaxed, quasi-classical pose, in the manner of a Titian Venus or Ingres's Odalisque. The reference is deliberate and the meaning and implication clear.

Kroll toured America photographing and interviewing young women who were earning their livings in massage parlours, nude kiosks, as go-go dancers, strippers and models. “Hard women, soft women, naive women, slick women - all professional sex objects, not necessarily beautiful but rather functional”. A rare glimpse into a hidden world and the insights of those who labour in it. The project was partially funded by a CAPS fellowship from the New York State Council on the Arts.