Originally Posted by John Hand (Post 1838397)

I am John Hand, the husband of Sylvia Hand from the late 50s all through the 60s. I took most of those photos. Some were in Death Valley, some at Shangri-La nudist park near Phoenix, and some on the beach along US 101 NW of Santa Barbara, CA.

Two of three of those photos (I do not have them showing now so can not go back and refer to them) were taken when Sylvia won the ASA (American Sunbathing Association) queen contest held at Penny Sylvan Nudist Resort in Pennsylvania in 1964. There are other photos on this site that are titled PennSylvan 68 etc but we were only there one time, in 1964.

Sylvia was featured on the front cover of Strength and Health Magazine three times, and had a large feature article inside in another issue. She was shown, for real, benching 150 and squatting with over 200 on her shoulders. This was at a time when women did not lift heavy weights. S&H was all excited about her because she was curvy and muscular. This was before women starting trying to look like men, as today.

One of the covers of S&H even featured our daughter with her. She also was selected by Arthur P. Jacobs of APJAC Productions to play the part of 'Nova" with Charlton Heston in the original Planet of the Apes, but the budget fell through, another year or so passed, and later a gal named Linda Harrison I think, got the part.

During the years 19 say 69 through the early 70s I was probably the most published photographer in the country, having work in many nudist books, glamour books, car and motorcycle books. I was the staff photog of Road Test magazine, Cycleguide, and the editor of Custom Chopper, for instance. Yes, those were fun times.