The iconic American post war pin-up, with their cheeky and suggestive pose was used as the ultimate weapon of desire during the '40s and '50s. The theory, which proved to be highly successful, was if you drape a scantily clad buxom beauty over a plumber's wrench (or any other equally as un-sexy object) then the average bloke will be knocking down the door of his local hardware get himself said plumbers wrench.
When Russian-born photographer Irana Davis reflects on the use of the American pin-ups she's saddened, but not for reasons of objectification or sexism like you might assume. She's actually more disturbed by the fact that her Russian ancestral sisters were denied this phenomenon which was part of her motivation for creating her very own interpretation of the genre. In the series she entitled
Nice Girls, Irina photographs exclusively Russian immigrant women mid seductively artificial pin-up pose on a purely white backdrop.
Commenting on the series she states
"My concept is to portray pure beauty, femininity and sexuality, not to objectify but to empower. To those who identify the clues in my work, hidden to most non-Russian eyes, I am telling the story of a crisis of Russian national identity, and the frustration and confusion of self-identification with the Old Country, the New World and a diaspora caught between them."
More at
irinadavis.com.