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Pinup Photographer Bunny Yeager Dies At 85

courtesy of Bunny Yeager

  Bunny Yeager, the 1950s pinup model from Miami who became a groundbreaking photographer, has died. Yeager used the natural beauty of South Florida as a backdrop for many of her photo sessions.
 
"I think I'm classic," Yeager said during an interview withClotilde Luce for WLRN'sUnder the Sun. "I wasn't too sexy, and I wasn't too prudish. I just reached a happy medium in glamour photography.

Yeager's career really took off when she photographed Bettie Page. She shot the famous brunette in a living room next to a Christmas tree wearing nothing but a Santa hat.Then she got a call that changed her life.

"Hugh Hefner called me on the phone," Yeager recalled. "I was in my kitchen cooking, trying to be a housewife, and they said, 'Could you send us more pictures of other girls?' I said, 'I'll try. I don't know of anybody that wants to pose nude, but I'll try,' and they begged me to shoot."

Yeager stopped shooting pinups in the 1970s, when men's magazines began to feature more overt sexuality. But she continued to sell her photos on eBay through 2011 and even designed a line of bikinis. 

Yeager died Sunday at a North Miami hospice. She was 85.

Hear and read an interview with Bunny Yeager here.

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