Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
In 1992, famed Czech photographer Tono Stano (NSFW) produced an arresting black and white photograph entitled “Sense”. Stano is famous for posing models into suggestive shapes and symbols in his photography. Two years later, Stano’s “Sense” photograph was used in the book cover design for the photography book The Body: Photographs of the Human Form by William A. Ewing. The Stano “Sense” image was cropped slightly on the top for the Ewing book cover design, which made the photograph an even more abstract and effective visual shape.
MGM’s marketing department liked the image too, so they utilized the very same concept for the one-sheet for the infamous 1995 Paul Verhoven film Showgirls. To be clear, MGM acquired licensing to use Tony Stano’s image for it’s Showgirls key art campaign, but it makes one wonder if the licensing became an afterthought of the poster’s release. A home video release of the poster art removed the original cropping of the photo (making it even closer to the original photograph), while an even more recent DVD release dropped the Stano inspired artwork altogether.
Though it does strike quite the pose, a distanced viewing makes for some freakish image. Now that’s what a lollipop woman looks like.