BETTIE! : The Incomparable Bettie Page Archives of Irving Klaw Hardcover – November 15, 2016

More of Irving Klaw’s Supposedly Destroyed Bettie Page Collection The two most interesting photographs in this book are on the last pages of the book (156-157). Bettie Page is in both of them. The first one is portrait of her standing next to Irving Klaw. The second picture is of Bettie in the Klaw studio hugging with Paula Klaw, Irving Klaw’s sister who was the photographer responsible for many of the book’s photos of Page. Paula is important because her brother Irving was ordered by the courts to destroy all the prints and negatives of the fetish and pin-up pictures he had been selling in his store and through the mail. However, before Irving could destroy his store’s photo inventory, Paula, who was the photographer of many of the images, cherry picked the files and saved the photos she thought should be salvaged. A great many of those hidden photos were of Bettie Page and make up the bulk of the photographs in this large format Coffee Table book. They remained hidden until after Irving Klaw’s death. Feminists around the world can thank Paula for saving the free spirit Bettie Page personified in her modeling. She didn’t believe that women are only to look pretty, take care of the family and keep their own individual personalities and desires quiet and out of sight. “In a 2012 episode of the PBS series ‘History Detectives’ presenter Gwen Hill called Bettie ‘a pre-feminist sexual heroine.’” This book is a wonderful piece of history. Bettie and Paula knew what they were doing with Paula’s 4X5 Speed Graphic photos with its flash to freeze the decisive moment in time. Women and men owe her a giant “Thank You, Paula.” This is definitely another Bettie Page turner

This book is huge! 15" tall and about 11" wide, this is the largest format Bettie Page book I've ever seen and it's worth twice the price! This is hardly a complete collection of Klaw's archives, there are a lot of great photos in here, but it's far from being a complete collection of his work with Bettie - plenty of good photos and good representations of most of his and Paula Klaw's photo shoots with Bettie.Since many of these photos are printed in such a large format, it illustrates the huge difference between Klaw and Bunny Yeager and others who photographed Bettie. Klaw's work was mass-production in a very small studio and they were churning them out quick - some of the photos are tack sharp, some are downright fuzzy and you never noticed it much because these are typically seen in a 4x6" format - if that large. Seeing them as double spread 22x15" photos shows how poorly focused a lot of them were. It's obvious they were primarily using just old Speed Graflex cameras and it was luck-of-the-draw if they got the settings right or not. Either way, the pictures are fantastic, as the subject matter makes up for the sometimes missed focusing points or exposure settings.Buy this one while you can, it's gigantic and it will be a good investment quality book in the years to come - the printing quality is superb and when you put this one with Bunny Yeager's Bettie Page: Queen of the Curves book, you have an outstanding collection of the more iconic two distinct styles of Bettie Page photos, both books in very large format and both printed extremely well.

I wish it had a better array of photos, but in all fairness it was only the author/photographer's actual collection. All is good. Plus it arrived head of an aborted purchase on eBay that took over 3 weeks.

This wonderful coffee-table-sized book has 158 pages. Most are pictures. The little text there is starts with a brief 1-page Introduction on p. 6. Then there are brief text descriptions, literally just a paragraph or two, for each of the six (6) chapters titled: Bold (p. 8), Beautiful (p. 28), Bondage (p. 60), Brush (p. 86), Bashful (p. 104), and Bullwhip (p. 126). Finally, there is a 2-page text Epilog, pgs. 156-157, with one photograph on each page. The copyright and publication data is on p. 158. There are no captions to the individual b&w photographs, just the letter and/or numbers from the individual shoots, which allow you to compare photographs in other collections for these shoots.Of course, the photographs are outstanding. The majority are 1-page or larger. There are a few with 4 photos on a page, but even then the photos are equal sized and easy to see. There is NO NUDITY.If you enjoy large high-quality photographs of Ms. Page in many different outfits and settings during the Klaw period, then this most certainly is a work for you. A real "must-have" edition. High quality paper and nice binding. This is a BUY.

I gave this to a dear friend as a Christmas present. She's absolutely in love with Bettie Page and literally shrieked with excitement as she pulled this out of the wrapping paper. The quality of the pictures is just amazing! And it is a great collection with the book divided into style sections. It is just gorgeous and well worth the money for any Page fan

Gifted to my father who freaked out he LOVES it ! Amazing photos . Great for a Bettie fan!

So happy with it!!!!!! Almost cried when arrived, here in Europe (Spain) is so hard to find books or things about miss Bettie Page, is such an amazing book so big sized, high quality artwork pics of the Klaw's brothers, and omg Bettie looks amazing in every single portrait. Thank You!.

The is a great collection for any fan. The quality is great. I don’t have to look on the internet for low quality pics any longer.

Brilliant! Exactly what I'd been looking for.