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One of the most popular newsgroup of Usenet is alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.vintage. It contains images from the history of porno, in fact the history of pictorial nudity, from paintings to early photographs, up to scans of eighties magazines. It’s a fantastic gallery of bygone pornography, some still effective today (like the scans of boobies magazines from the ‘70/’80es, very exotic in the age of silicon), while others are of more historical value, such as these.

This is the sort of images you’d find in adult postcard collections, then the most popular form of erotica. These come from the Casino de Paris (at the time the lust capital of the world), feature some of the showgirls who worked there, and were obviously colored by hand. The theatrical setting and the incredible costumes added to the image temperature: dancers were not only attractive for their shapes but also, and perhaps mostly, for their supposed free lifestyle and sexual habits.

It’s available online, as a PDF document, C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, edited by Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli: “An anthology that collects the best materials of two years debate: from The Art and Politics of Netporn conference held in 2005 in Amsterdam to the 2007 C’Lick Me festival in Paradiso, Amsterdam. C’Lick Me opens the field of “Internet pornology”. I’m in it too.