Imagine the location of Brig-a-doon as your backdrop, or the intimacy of a private country cottage as your studio with the prospect of photographing a selection of 20 beautiful English maidens. All this in your own time and, on top of this, making a profitable career out of such a desirable assignment.

The pursuit of a playboy or the pleasurable hobby of a titled aristocrat perhaps? In fact, it’s the dream of a qualified engineer with no professional training in photography. Canadian John Xavier has achieved such a desirable vocation…

Gradually he found he was marketing more of his own work and selling numerous pictures to a variety of men’s magazines. More recently he has been involved in the production of his first book. Entitled Every inch a lady, it is a photographic tribute to five of his most remarkable models...

I must admit to having a major soft spot for late Seventies/early Eighties vaseline-smeared David Hamilton-esque photography. The more over-the-top romantic and saucy the better. This superb set of photos were printed in one of those ubiquitous photography magazines of the time, accompanying an article about John Xavier. I think one of the models might possibly be Sylvestra le Touzel but I can barely see through the Vaseline I’m afraid.

Photographed by John Xavier.

Scanned from Photography, August 1981.