Author(s): Dian Hanson

Photography

How did Sweden get sexy? This is a exploration of the origin of hardcore. Long ago, in the year 1965, there was no explicit pornography. There was the odd grainy stag film, the occasional French postcard, the rare Cuban chapbook or homemade Polaroid, but the glossy professional colour pornography ubiquitous to modern society did not exist. The man who changed all that was Berth Milton of Stockholm, with his audacious little digest, "Private". He and "Private" were directly responsible for the Swedish Parliament's decision to treat sexually explicit materials as protected free speech, leading to the abolition of obscenity laws over most of northern Europe during the next decade. With its smiling, exuberantly uninhibited models, "Private" created a fantasy of Sweden as the most liberated country on earth, a sexual wonderland that enchanted men around the globe. Publisher Milton was the magazine's sole photographer, so the "Private" paradise was very much his personal dream. Genius and tyrant, he insisted on only the best for his magazine, rising in the 1970s to become the Hugh Hefner of Hardcore. This five volume, 960-page mini-boxed set presents the best photo spreads of "Private" from 1970 to 1979 as selected by the compiler.