CUT THE RIBBON, ALFRED NOYER (OR JULIAN MANDEL?)
Posted on December 12, 2013 by Editorial Staff
Alfred Noyer, or Julian Mandel, was a signature name, and surely the pseudonym related to the identity of one the best-known commercial photographers of female nudes of the early twentieth century. Known in the 1910s, the mid-1930s, his picture portrayed models in classical poses, photographed both in studio and outdoors. Images are composed artfully, with exquisite tones and soft use of lighting, showing a particular texture created by light rather than shadow. Mandel was a member of the German avant-garde, featuring natural settings, skin tones, roughness of nature vs. beauty of human beings. The nude photographs were in a postcard-sized format, but as “A Brief History of Postcards” explains, “A majority of the French nude postcards were called postcards because of the size. They were never meant to be postally sent. It was illegal to send such images in the post”. The size enabled them to be placed readily into jacket pockets, packages, and books. There is a belief nowadays that Julian Mandel was the pseudonym of Julian Walery, a well known photographer of the same period, still, he cut a huge ribbon!
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