Back in the day
A wander through the AP archive. This week we pay a visit to January 1984
WHATEVER the subject, you can be sure an AP cover from the ’80s would illustrate it with a female model in minimal clobber, and this doozy is no exception. We’re guessing the model’s diaphanous outfit is supposed to convey frosty light, but we can’t help thinking of packaging material... Anyway, she seems to be coping with winter light OK. The other major feature, Body
Talk, was even more risqué, with Malcolm Wood showing ‘how to bring a dash of fantasy to your slides with a living projector screen.’ Austin Powers would have loved it, so the piece feels dated, even for the mid-’80s. Thankfully, the issue gets more highbrow with a well-written piece on Julia Margaret Cameron by Margaret Harker – the UK’s first woman professor of photography and the RPS’s first female president. Meanwhile, editor Roy Green was worrying whether stills photography would survive the video recording boom. I’m sure he’s delighted that we are all still here; indeed, video has been absorbed by cameras and camera phones rather than the other way around.