In 2011, Sebastien Girard, a French photographer, publisher and curator, purchased a milk crate packed with private photo albums from an American auction house. An avid collector of found photography archives, he had no real idea what he was buying, nor who had taken the pictures. But when the cache of 911 Polaroids arrived at his home in Paris – each meticulously numbered, dated and captioned by hand – he noticed they were united by the umbrella label: “My TV Girls.”
Taken between 1978 and 1982, the fuzzy, filmy images all depict the same TV screen, presumably shot from a sofa. On the screen, there is always a female character, often undressing or nude. These women may be from popular TV shows of the era – Dallas, Charlie’s Angels, Happy Days, Three’s Company – but there are also snapshots of adverts for bras and even pregnancy tests, as the handwritten annotations reveal.
