It’s about misogyny, obvs. And the Epstein Files.
Going from left to right, following the line of ‘touch’...
1. Torso of Richard Nixon with the face of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Image of President Nixon (1913 - 1994) leaving the White House after resigning, and the former Prince Andrew (1960 - ) brother of the king, in the back of a cop car, having been arrested on his 66th birthday (19th February, 2026) and held on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
On June 17, 1972, campaign workers associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election were caught planting listening devices in the opposition Democratic party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate building.
Eventually, President Nixon ‘was obliged to confess publicly that he had lied to his lawyers, the Congress and the public about his role in the plot to hush up the involvement of key members of his staff’. He resigned (August 9, 1974) to avoid probable conviction, and was later pardoned by President Ford, who followed him into office.
‘Watergate - Nixon Resigns’ by Stephen Barber in Washington. Daily Telegraph, 9th August 1974. Photographer uncredited. 125 Years In Words And Pictures: The Daily Telegraph 1955 - 1980. Edited by Andrew Hutchinson. Printed in England by H.E. Warne Ltd., London & St. Austell, 1980. Bought from Oxfam in Bromley for £1.99.
The ‘letters page’ of the Metro, 23rd February 2026. Photo by Phil Noble/ Reuters.
2. Action Painting by Allen Jones
I’ve never liked the work of Allen Jones (1937 - ), but then I wouldn’t. Believe it or not, this piece was made in 2015 (not 1985) and exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition in 2016, where the artist is a Senior Royal Academician.
Action Painting, 2015, by Allen Jones. 205 x 51 x 61cm. Painted fibreglass figure on stainless steel base. Photo by Leon Chew. Exhibited at the RA Summer Show in 2016. Cut from Summer Exhibition Illustrated 2016, a selection from the 248th Summer Exhibition, edited by Richard Wilson RA. Royal Academy of Arts Publications, 2016. Book design by Adam Brown. Printed in Wales by Gomer Press. ISBN: 978-1-910350-52-2. Front Cover: Pierre et Gilles. Hand painted photograph on canvas.
3. Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966) with ‘women’s libber’s’ feet
Raquel Welch (1940 - 2023) ‘studied drama at San Diego State and played bit parts until ex-child actor and press agent Patrick Curtis took her career in hand, launching her as a sex symbol of the 1960s. The constant barrage of sexy publicity photos tended to obscure the fact she could act. She has never been able to overcome the early image of a busty pin-up. A world tour in the 1980s was a disaster because the press was determined to punish her for trying to be good’.
In 1971 ‘her feet’ were outside of the Miss World Contest at the Albert Hall in London, ‘women’s libbers protest at what they regard as the voyeuristic exploitation of the meat market taking place within. One of them has donned the uniform of a ‘sex object’, though it’s too cold to dispense with her sheepskin Afghan coat, a garment redolent of the era’.
‘One Million Years B.C.’ (1966) was directed by Don Chaffey. Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper (for many years he resided in a seafront flat overlooking the sea in Ferring, West Sussex). Screenplay/ production by Michael Carreras. Edited by Tom Simpson. Music by Mario Nascimbene. Produced by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts. Warner Brothers/ Pathé Based on the 1940 film by Mickell Novack, George Baker and Joseph Frickert. Image and quote from ‘Great Movies' by Nick Roddick, John Douglas Eames, Vernon Harbin, Clive Hirschhorn and Richard B. Jewell. Foreword by James Mason. Published for Marks and Spencer (Baker St, London) by Octopus Books (59 Grosvenor St, London) 1985. Copyright, Hennerwood Publications Ltd. Produced by Mandarin, 22a Westlands Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Printed in Hong Kong. Front jacket photograph: Kobal Collection. ISBN: 0-86273-2379. Inscribed with (what-looks-like) ‘B.V. Wells TOTAL £10.05’. Bought from a charity shop.
‘Feet’ photo by Chris Djukanovic. Image and quote from ‘An Independent Eye: A Century of Photographs’ by Roger Hudson. Hulton Getty Picture Collection & The Independent. Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1998. ISBN: 0-7509-2107-2. Project manager: Richard Collins. Designer: Paul Welti. Picture researcher: Alex Linghorn. Scanner: Antonia Hille. Typesetter: Peter Howard. Typeset in Frutiger. Originated by Jade Reprographics Ltd. Printed in Great Britain by Butler and Tanner, Frome, Somerset. A birthday gift to Simon from Lucia. Bought from a charity shop.
4. New Orleans ‘Sex Worker’, c1912
The photographer, Bellocq, has erased the woman’s face. Although, there is a slim chance it was his Jesuit priest brother, nobody knows for sure. She was photographed against a blank wall on which she drew a butterfly. There appears to be a heart on her arse. We’ll never know the full story, but I’m choosing to think he erased her face to protect her identity.
Ernest James Bellocq (1873 - 1949) was born into a wealthy New Orleans family. He took photographs of ‘prostitutes’ in the Storyville district of the city, which was one of the country's few legalised red-light districts. This is one of them. I went down a rabbit hole looking at the rest (or at least the ones which have survived) not wanting to like them, but they are beautiful.
Little was known of Bellocq’s work during his lifetime, but seventeen years after his death, Lee Friedlander purchased some glass plates from an antique-book dealer. He made prints, which were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, to great acclaim.
Storyville Portrait, c1912 by E.J. Bellocq. Gold-toned print. 10 x 8 inches. Image cut from ‘The Photo Book’. Phaidon, 1997. Printed in China. ISBN: 978-0-7148-4488-6. Bought from a charity shop.
5. Torso Baby Prince Andrew with the legs of a Kent hopfield worker
‘The baby Prince Andrew, born on 19th February 1960, proudly grasps the hands of his father Prince Philip and his sister Princess Anne at Balmoral in the summer of that year’.
The legs belong to an unnamed worker in a Kent hopfield, 1927. ‘Workers on stilts with bundles of twine which they will tie to the wires stretched horizontally between the poles. The hop bines or stalks will then grow up the twine. Whole families came from the East End of London to strip the catkin-like fruits from the bines, sleeping in barns and sheds, and regarding the time away from their slums and tenements as a holiday outing, with pay.’
Baby Prince Andrew image and quote from ‘The Country Life Book of the Royal Silver Jubilee’ by Patrick Montague-Smith, Hamlyn 1976. Printed in Great Britain by Alabaster Passmore and Sons Ltd., Maidstone, Kent. Page 154. Photo: Camera Press*. Bought from a charity shop.
Legs image and quote from ‘An Independent Eye: A Century of Photographs’, by Roger Hudson. Hulton Getty Picture Collection & The Independent. Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1998. ISBN: 0-7509-2107-2. Project manager: Richard Collins. Designer: Paul Welti. Picture researcher: Alex Linghorn. Scanner: Antonia Hille. Typesetter: Peter Howard. Typeset in Frutiger. Originated by Jade Reprographics Ltd. Printed in Great Britain by Butler and Tanner, Frome, Somerset. A birthday gift to Simon from Lucia. Bought from a charity shop.
6. Policeman
An illustration for Punch Magazine (22nd September, 1888) by John Tenniel (1820 - 1914) mocking police attempts to catch the Ripper. Engraving by Joseph Swain (1820 - 1909) or one of his assistants.
Cut from ‘London… The Sinister Side’ by Steve Jones. Tragical History Tours/ Wicked Publications (222 Highbury Road, Nottingham NG6 9FE) 1986. Typeset and printed in Great Britain by J.W. Brown Ltd., Darwin Press (77a Blackheath Road, London SE10 8PD). ISBN: 1-870000-04-8. Mary Evans Picture Library.
7. Peggy Satterlee ‘teenage floozie’, 1926 - 2005
In 1942, two underage girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused Errol Flynn of statutory rape. The trial took place in 1943, and Flynn was acquitted after the defense lawyer, Jerry Giesler, attacked the girls' morals and characters. Giesler had ‘a reputation for getting the big fish of the movie industry off the hook of scandal and disgrace’.
Went down a bit of a rabbit hole with Peggy. She was an actor and made 2 films (uncredited roles) in 1942 when she was 16 years old. She never made another film, so we can read between the lines there. Mary Blair (also, uncredited) did the credits sequence for one of the films, Arabian Nights, and Milton Krasner was the cinematographer.
Image cut from ‘Infamous Crimes That Shook The World’ Poebus/BPC Publishing, 1973 and Macdonald/ Black Cat Publishing (1 New Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1AR) 1989. Printed and bound in Hungary by Novotrade/ Egyetemi Press. ISBN: 0-7481-0260-4. Photo: UPI. Bought for £1.50 from Barnardos on Penge High Street on 9th November, 2024.
8. Nadia Comăneci
At the age of 14, Nadia Comăneci (1961 - ) ‘scored seven 10s in Montreal (1976). Before her, no olympic gymnast had received one’.
‘Afterwards they asked her why she didn’t smile more’.
It was a demanding schedule for 12 and 13 year olds. “The authorities made us lie about the amount of training we did”.
‘Little Miss Perfect’ by David Walsh, July 1976. Cut from ‘The Sporting Century’, edited by Alan English. The Times Newspapers Ltd. Published by HarperCollins/ Willow (77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6) 1999. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bath Press Ltd. Designed by Paul Calver and Roger Hammond. ISBN: 0-7230-1044-7. Further acknowledgements to Jeremy Bayston, Lawrence Smith, John Smith, Julian Osbaldstone, Clare Harrison and Thomas Cussans.
9. Evelyn Del Rio
Evelyn Del Rio (1931 - 1998) was known as ‘the Latin Shirley Temple’, she began her career at age 3 with a radio show called ‘The Baby Evelyn Show’. She was a headline dancer at the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre from age 3 to 13. She acted in 17 movies, including ‘The Bank Dick’ where she is pictured here as Elsie Mae Adele Brunch Sousé. Call me cynical, but I can’t see how she could’ve possibly escaped abuse of some kind or another.
The Bank Dick directed by Eddie Cline. Universal Pictures, 1940. Written by WC Fields. Directed by Edward F Cline and Ralph Ceder. Cinematography by Milton R Krasner. Actors pictured: WC Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Jessie Ralph and Evelyn del Rio. Cut from ‘50 Years of the Movies’ by Jeremy Pascall. Published by Hamlyn for WH Smith, 1981. Printed and bound in Spain by Graficromo. ISBN: 0-600-34207-7. Once belonged to Sarah.
*The photo credits are as they appear in the books/articles from which the images were cut. For the record, I don’t accept the name of a company as a photography credit. There was an actual person behind the camera. If you are that person, or know them, please give me a shout.
Copyright: Alison Aye, 2026