Pulp Covers

     About 8 years ago my friend Serafina gave me a thank you card for helping her out on a project. The card was actually a post card of a vintage pulp cover. I thought it was funny and ridiculous. It was around this time I had gotten involved in studio photography and thought it would be fun to recreate this pulp cover.

Dime a Dance Queen

     Pulp fiction had its heyday in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Genres ranged from westerns to science fiction to hard-boiled detective and everything in-between. Today it’s the illustrated covers of these novels that are popular and kitschy. These trashy dime a dozen novels (some writers were paid per word) weren’t the only novels to have these illustrated pulp covers. After a novel went through it’s hard cover printing, a soft cover printing would follow, and sometimes it would be with a different publisher. This new publisher would commission a new cover that would help sell these books at drug stores and news stands across the USA. So you could have a tawdry pulp novel like Divorce Bait next to a famed work of fiction like Catcher in the Rye. Actually J.D. Salinger was quite furious with that illustration that donned his novel so when it came time for the the next printing he took control. The new cover was just maroon with yellow lettering which I'm sure you’ll probably be familiar with from your high-school days. But regardless of whether it was a trashy novel or a great work of art, the covers tried to be a sensationalist as possible. Here’s a good article in New Yorker Magazine about the pulp business.

Five Years of Stripped Screw Burlesque's Disney After Dark in Photos

As I headed out to photograph Stripped Screw Burlesque’s Disney After Dark show last week, I realized the show is in it’s 5^th year. I have photographed the show every year, first at The Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous back in 2011 to just last week and The Colombia City Theater. Since I’m sentimental, you know I would want to have a photo retrospective of those 5 years. Over that time, troupe members have come and gone and there have been several guests along the way. I'm grateful to have photographed their show these past 5 years.

Congratulations Stripped Screw Burlesque for 5 years of your awesome show Disney After Dark.

                                                     All photos © Paul O'Connell   

Roxie Moxie-DAD 2011 

Trojan Original & Long Richard Longfellow-DAD 2011