Mystery gun girl is just having fun

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Our beloved editor was intrigued by the picture seen here. And who wouldn’t be? He wrote: “This lady is doing a little nap in her 1941 car and carries a pistol. A great picture, but further information is unknown to me.”

That made it an outright challenge. Who was the girl, and why did she have the gun? It turned out not to be a very hard nut to crack. In fact it took us just minutes to find out more. This picture was, once again, shot for Life magazine and didn’t come on its own. As a matter of fact, it was just one of a whole series of photographs, taken by David Scherman on a summer’s day in 1941. Scherman was a photojournalist who also covered the War for Life magazine.

But despite the gun, these pictures were definitely taken with a lighter subject in mind. The series also tells us the girl with the gun is a model named Joan Smith, 21 years old at the time as thus 98 if she'd still be with us. It adds that Joan was celebrating a vacation at Truro, on Cape Cod. Together with Scherman “They spent an afternoon and evening informally shooting of what turned out to be a parody of photographic poses standardized by certain U.S. publications.”

Nothing to worry about, the War was far away at that place at that time.

(Words Jeroen Booij, picture Life magazine, David Scherman)

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