Suze Randall needs no introduction. She’s a trailblazer: the first female photographer to shoot page 3 for The Sun, the first woman to lens a full-frontal Playboy layout, the first female staff photographer for both Playboy (1975-1977) and Hustler (1977-1979). It’s no surprise she also contributed to Playgirl (and the far more explicit Penthouse and High Society…) So did her daughter, Holly Randall –and we hope to bring that interview to you soon enough.
For her Playgirl spreads, Randall switched the gender of the models she shot, but didn’t lose her knack for bringing out the best in them. “Male photographers (…) are so worried about the structure, the editors, the business, they forget about the models – but you’re only as good as your model feels,” Randall told Hannah Ewens in a juicy interview for Vice. “Make them relax, make them see this chick behind the camera who doesn’t know what she’s doing or being an idiot, and they start to laugh and not take it so seriously.” Ewens writes: “When Hugh Hefner fell in love with photos Suze –then-29– took of Norwegian model Lillian Müller, he flew the pair to the Playboy’s main office in Chicago. ‘Had I been a guy he never would’ve flown me over with Lillian; he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me,’ Suze says – but a new nude model photographed by another woman? Hef was curious.”
How did the legendary Suze Randall photograph a male model? How did a woman’s gaze –and her aesthetic– differ from her male colleagues’?
