The Lens of Love

"Always I have admired the female body. When I was a boy of 13 or 14 in Trieste, there was a beautiful piazza in the center of town where I would go for walks with friends, and on one side of the piazza there were two statues of naked women. Even so young, I always stared at them when we passed."

--Pompeo Posar

In Italy and Yugoslavia, at the time Senior Staff Photographer Pompeo Posar was growing up there, a boy with an artist's eye didn't have many opportunities to view the nude female form. It was the late Thirties, early Forties, and there were no men's magazines, no nude bars and certainly no adult cable channel. There were, however, museums.

"I loved going to the museums in Europe," says Posar. "I'd stand for hours in front of pictures by Rubens, Titian and Raphael. I would lose all track of time, just drinking in the beauty."

It was a thirst that, fortunately for us and our readers, has never been quenched. For 25 years, we've dispatched Pompeo and his camera all over the world, trusting that wherever he went, he would return with striking pictures of the most beautiful women to be found. We haven't been disappointed.

Although his photographic talents are virtually unlimited--he has photographed 40 of our covers, to cite one example-- Pompeo's specialty is the centerfold. He has photographed 60 Playmates--54 for Playboy and six for our foreign editions--since he joined the magazine's staff in 1960; and in the process, he has created a style that is still a textbook for aspiring photographers. His many awards for photographic excellence attest to his stature in the profession.

Besides earning a reputation for Playboy as one of the most photographically lush publications in the world, Posar has been a suave and capable spokesman for the magazine. Journalists who have interviewed him over the years have described him as "dashing," "Continental," "reassuring." All are astounded by his near-legendary success in getting his photographic subjects to shed their inhibitions, along with their clothes, for the camera.

In the cover story for the April 1985 issue of American Photographer magazine, David Roberts describes the process by which a nervous Playmate prospect visibly relaxed during a few hours of working with Pompeo. At first she was shy about revealing her body, Roberts reports, but "by noon it had become routine for her to loiter at Posar's side, an open robe barely perched on her shoulders, as she scrutinized her nude Polaroid self along with the experts. I pondered this transformation and deduced that it was due entirely to what might be called Posar's 'bedside manner.'"

"I think," says Playboy Associate Photography Editor Janice Moses, "that he makes the women relax because they know very well that he likes them and he appreciates their beauty, and he's very sensitive to their shyness."

One young woman who had posed for him told us, "I don't know what I expected a photographer for a men's magazine to be like, but I guess I expected something, well, creepy, you know? But Pompeo is such a nice man, he was a complete surprise. He got me to do things that I had never thought I'd do. There isn't a creepy bone in his body."

"I never want a girl to feel intimidated by my looking at her with my bare eyes," Posar says, "so I usually avert them when I'm not looking through the camera. I turn away and let her relax. That way, she has no fear. And if I do look at her, I say she's beautiful and I smile. That way, she has confidence in herself."

Pompeo's empathy with his subjects is so complete that he often strikes the poses he'd like them to assume--so convincingly that one model told him, "Pompeo, I wish I could take the photographs and let you do the poses."

Posar admits that to do his best job of capturing each model's special qualities, "I must (text continued on page 138) fall a little bit in love with her." That he never falls more than a bit is attributable to his 38-year romance with his wife, Melita, whose bikini-clad figure drifted into his view finder on a Zagreb riverbank back in 1944. They were married in 1947, shortly after he had completed his studies in economics and commerce at the University of Zagreb. Once, when we asked Posar, man to man, if he didn't sometimes feel frustrated by working with gorgeous women with whom his professionalism forbade further intimacy, he laughed and replied, "Sure, I get frustrated. But that just gives me more passion to take home to Melita."

That tack is typical of Posar, a European gentleman of the old school. He speaks softly, with an accent so lilting and elegant that, had he not become a photographer, he could just as easily have sold expensive sports cars on television. (One writer likened the Posar voice to "a soft and caressing Mediterranean melody.") But from the time his father, a food importer/exporter, "made the mistake" of buying his 15-year-old son his first Leica, Posar has never wanted to be anything other than a photographer. "I tried working for my father for a few years but finally realized I didn't want to be a businessman. The only thing important to me was photography." So in 1954, he and Melita came to America to begin a new life. Cleveland was the first city they visited and it was, then as now, Cleveland. "Nothing much to do in Cleveland at night, so I go to a bookstore to browse. I find an issue of Playboy and love it. So I go buy every back issue I can find. I think to myself, I'd love to work for this magazine." Five years later, having settled in Chicago and developed a reputation as a free-lance photographer, Pompeo had an opportunity to shoot a few stills on the set of a new late-night television show called Playboy's Penthouse, hosted by Playboy Editor and Publisher Hugh Hefner. During that and subsequent shows, Posar got some good photos of our boss and his guests, who included Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Newhart and the legendary singer Mabel Mercer. He blew up the photos and gave them to Hef, who liked them enough to offer Posar a job on the staff of the magazine.

Once he was hired, Playboy's photo editors were quick to realize what an asset they had in a man who could not only shoot terrific pictures but converse in Italian, French, English and the principal Yugoslavian languages and get by in several other tongues. Over the years, they delegated Posar to bring you Girls of... features on the Adriatic Coast, Rome, Munich, the Iron Curtain countries, Washington, Paris, the New South, the Riviera, Spain, Rio, Texas, Canada and Australia, not to mention several football conferences. One year, he logged 78,000 miles in the air and on the road. Along the way, he has also photographed his share of actresses, singers and otherwise famous women, a few of whom are pictured on these pages. But don't expect to hear any good gossip about these ladies from Pompeo. He never gossips. What did you think of Joan Collins, Pompeo? "She (text concluded on page 197)Lens of Love(continued from page 142) was a very nice lady." Well, what did you think of Rita Jenrette? "Rita and I get along especially well. We are friends." You see what we mean?

The women, on the other hand, have things to say about him. Says Terry Moore, "He's totally wonderful, like a cavalier from the Old World; the last of his kind."

Ruth Guerri, Miss July 1983: "Pompeo was the first person I met at Playboy, which was fortunate, because he made a very good impression. I was visiting Chicago with friends, one of whom was a male model, and we dropped his composites off at the Playboy modeling agency. The receptionist suggested I talk with Pompeo, and I did. That was about seven years ago, long before my centerfold appeared, and we've kept in touch. I know his wife, Melita, too; they're just super. It's rare to run across such natural people when you're in the modeling business, where you find so many fragile egos."

Posar's most recent Playmate, October 1984's Debi Nicolle Johnson: "I've been an admirer of Pompeo's work since I first saw Playboy. When he introduced himself to me at the 30th Anniversary Playmate Search, I broke out with goose bumps. It's funny: Your dreams are usually better than the real thing, but in this case, Pompeo was better than my dreams. Next to my father, he's my favorite man in the world."

We can tell a few stories about this unassuming virtuoso of the camera, too--about the time a photographer from Rio de Janeiro spent five months there looking for beautiful girls to pose for us but could locate only two who would pose nude, so we sent Pompeo, who came back after only three weeks with ten more; or the way he photographed and interviewed a mind-boggling 1700 hopefuls in five weeks during our 30th Anniversary Playmate Search and never showed fatigue.

Like all truly creative persons, however, Pompeo prefers to let his work speak for itself. Those of you who would like to see him in the midst of the creative process will enjoy the tribute to Posar on Playboy Video Magazine Volume #7, which will be available at video dealers' later this month. Due this fall is a Playboy special publication featuring the best of Posar's photos. Both will add perspective to 25 years of an incredibly romantic and successful career.

Perhaps Pompeo sums it up best when he says, "If I live again, I'd like to have the same wife and the same job." And if there's a Playboy magazine in that next life, we'd sure like to have the same Posar.