Mary Willumsen

Mary Birgitte Cecilie Magdalene Willumsen (13 July 1884 – 25 October 1961) was a Danish photographer who, as early as 1916, sold postcards with photographs of women in scanty clothing or nude postures taken at Copenhagen's Helgoland beach establishment. She discontinued her work when the police began to show interest in kiosks selling nude photographs. Her work is now considered to have considerable artistic value.

Early life Mary Willumsen came from a working-class family in the Copenhagen district of Valby. While young, she learnt the meaning of hard work. As a seven-year-old, she helped her mother and brother to deliver newspapers, earning a little more for the family. After she was confirmed in 1899, she worked as a seamstress at the Magasin du Nord department store. In 1910, she married Harald Axel Larsen, a house painter and photographer who died in 1913.

Background From the beginning of the 20th century, Danish photographers started to show interest in sports and bathing facilities where they could photograph women in flimsy clothing. Helgoland, a popular bathing establishment on the outskirts of Copenhagen, attracted a number of photographers including Peter Elfelt, Holger Damgaard, Julius Aagaard and Sophus Juncker-Jensen. In 1914, Mary Willumsen also started to visit the establishment.

Postcard photography

Ahead of the interest in female nude photography which increased in the 1920s, Mary Willumsen's photographs from 1916 to 1920, though carefully posed, appear more spontaneous than her earlier work. Portraying groups of smiling schoolgirls to grown women in different states of undress, her pictures have been described as unique in their intimacy and spontaneity, reflecting the personal appreciation Willumsen had for her subjects. To some extent, her photographs are inspired by German and French nudist postcards. Uniquely, in her photographs, women's faces are covered, never revealing their identity.

Nevertheless, as a result of the police investigation, Willumsen immediately stopped producing postcards.

Later life Mary Willumsen never returned to photography. Instead she made a living from buying antiques and selling them to well-to-do customers in Hellerup and Gentofte.

Assessment Mary Willumsen occupies a special place in the history of photography. Some of her photographs are admittedly rather conventional examples of "daring" shots of women in spicy positions. But in others, she reproduces informal situations at the bathing establishment. The women's curves stand out against the plain geometry of the surrounding woodwork or we see the wave-like rhythm of women lying on the surrounding sand dunes. Even if Willumsen's postcards were sold at the Scala kiosk to those looking for pornography, the Helgoland bathing establishment seems to have offered a level of openness where women could act naturally without behaving erotically. The resulting photographs show that freedom of expression is more important than eroticism.