British Journal Photographic Almanacs in the 1950s: How were the photographs selected?

It is a mystery how the photographs that appeared in a special photogravure-printed section of the old British Journal Photographic Almanacs in the 1950s were chosen. Some were superb; others were dreadful. 

Roger Hicks it was I think who in one of his articles stated that many old photographs were actually very poor photographs. Excluding even the kitsch still lifes and the banal pictorialism, there were still some really poor images selected for the BJ Almanac amongst a few that were superb examples of photography of that era. Some it would seem were gleaned from superficially prestigious amateur photographic exhibitions held in the previous year. Whatever the selection method used by the editor from 1937 to 1967, Arthur J Dalladay (1894-1989), his choices often left a lot to be desired. So much so in fact that one might wonder if being in the same club might have been one criterion.

One of the worst—if not the worst—to be found in those volumes was a female nude by a Cecil J Blay. I will not reproduce it here because it doesn’t warrant being given more air than it got at the time. I was trying to find out who Cecil J Blay was when I remembered I has seen the name somewhere before. A Google search reminded me. He was a frequent photographic contributor to model railway magazines. He lived in Reading in a house backing onto the Great Western line from Paddington. He was elected a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America in 1950 and was the link in UK for photographic competitions in the USA.

Blay appears in Google searches mainly for his religious tracts which still seem popular with Americans of the christian persuasion. The author of those would appear to be the same Cecil J Blay since his dates (1916-1976) shown on one website are nearly the same as those for the registration of his death in the Reading and Wokingham Registration District (1906-1976) if one accepts the 1 in 16 is a typographic error.

Other than that I do not know if Blay was other than an amateur photographer, if he was a man of the cloth (many railway enthusiasts were) or how, other than as a member of a charmed circle, he got his female nude into the BJ Almanac.

'Chorine Recumbent' or 'Crossed Legs'? Who was Charles Newland?

My birthday present in 1956 was popular with my school classmates. It was the British Journal Photographic Almanac for the year and my mother wrote my name in the front flyleaf. It was my second book on photography. The popularity was due not to the information on photography it contained but to the final photograph in the 'Pictorial Supplement'. That photograph (Number 32) was by Charles Newland (England) and was titled "Chorine Recumbent". A footnote stated that it was from the London Salon of Photography, 1955. 'Chorine', incidentally was not the girl's name but is a term for a chorus girl. We did not know that and thought it must have been her name. But 'Chorine' was enough to set the young hormones aflutter in Form 3A.

Clearly the chorine is still able to bring about the same effect in older boys in 2014. I was surprised to see her appear in Servatius's blog 'Antique and Classic Photographic Images'* on 30 October 2013. I was even more surprised when trying to find out who Charles Newland was that this image has, in terms of old photographs, gone viral. The original entry has been re-blogged (in some cases to sites displaying the more exotic tastes of their compilers) numerous times in the past three months and appears on at least three Pinterest boards.

However, the original post has a different title, 'Crossed Legs' 1950s and is shown in an untoned black-and-white. So I don't know where Servatius scanned the photograph from. Was it also published in the catalogue of the London Salon in 1955 under that different title? I have not been able to find a copy.

In BJPA 'Chorine Recumbent' appeared in that sepia gravure that marked the Almanac's style—outdated even in the mid-1950s. I have tried to get the scan as close to the original tonation as I can. Here she is:

You can see at the bottom of the photograph (not the caption) 'Charles Newland ARPS'. I have been completely unable to find any information on Charles Newland. Does anybody know who he was and what else he did?

* http://servatius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/crossed-legs-1950s.html