Via rare erotica comes Ralph Ginzburg, an icon in the history of American erotica and American censorship:

Collection of Eros magazine
Image sourced here.

1972 mug shot of Ginzburg
Image sourced here.

It’s agreed by all observers that what really sealed Ginzburg’s fate was a photo-spread in the fourth, final issue of EROS: “Black & White in Color: A Photographic Tone Poem” by Ralph M. Hattersley, Jr., a respected photographer and professor who wrote over a dozen instructional photography books. (Hattersley passed away in 2000.) The photos are extraordinarily tame by today’s standards – there’s no sex, and the only “naughty bits” on display are the woman’s breasts and both booties in one sideview shot. But showing a black man and a white woman, in the nude, embracing, kissing, obviously getting ready to do the deed – well, it was just too shocking in the early 1960s. Ginzburg was made to pay. —rare erotica