Tom Kelley Photo Exhibit Opening at Milk Studios

In 1953, photographer Tom Kelley took a nude portrait of an out-of-work actress — Marilyn Monroe — that became the centerfold photo in Playboy’s first issue. It was a high point in Kelley’s career, which spanned the 1940s through the 1970s, and pioneered the landscape of nude portraiture.

On Tuesday night, Sept. 30, Milk Studios opened an exhibition of Kelley’s previously unseen photography. Featuring exposed breasts and seductive smiles, the images flirt with pornography, compelling the audience to reevaluate both artistic and categorical expectations.

With a twinkle in the eye, Kelley’s subjects reciprocate the gaze of the audience. Kelley strikes a balance between classy and sexy, empowering his subjects and “celebrating female sexuality,” said Sara Friedman, who attended the opening. Friedman, a television executive, called Kelley’s earlier work “sexual without being crass.” That clearly changed in his images from the 1970s, she said. “Though it was more racially diverse, the girls seemed more objectified with their blank stares.”

The opening reception drew an eclectic audience that spanned generations – from 20-somethings through retirement age. Artists, media people, educators, loyal patrons of Milk Studios, and photography fans mingled in front of the photos or sought the tall, graying man with a mustache who spent the evening in the back left corner of the gallery.

Sometimes mistaken for Tom Kelley himself, Tom Kelley Jr., the man with the mustache, was signing first-edition, $70 copies of his father’s book Tom Kelley’s Studio, featuring more than 260 color and black and white photographs.

Kelley Jr. said he had been sitting on his father’s photo archive for years, and it was “time the images come out.” While Kelley Jr. observed that most attendees at the reception were just “photography fans,” not particularly familiar with his father’s work, there were definitely some in the crowd who came for the pinups.

“Good breasts are hard to find,” said Bill Fleischer, an art insurance dealer, who added that he was enjoying the women in Kelley’s photos and the many stylish women in the gallery crowd. He wasn’t the only one observing the breasts of Kelley’s models. One woman said the exhibit was a fun opportunity to “look at other women’s bodies and breasts and critique them without seeming weird.”

Actress Madeleine Russell enjoyed “the nostalgia” of the images. “Penthouse and Playboy nowadays- it doesn’t look real,” she said. “The women here look real. Their hair is natural and they’re beautiful.” Joseph Mendez, an educator at Morgan Library, called it “a retro exhibit. It shows the years when American society opened up. The conception of women and nudity changed.”

Despite the retro look, some saw a contemporary connection.

“The exhibit is appropriate, timing-wise, in terms of the recently hacked celebrity nudes,” said Friedman. “Except here, there’s consent.” Now more than 60 years later, artistically and socially, Kelley’s nudes are still relevant.

The show runs at New York’s Milk Gallery in Chelsea through November 2.