Did the photo of a woman and a pony really exist?
I found a rather interesting reference in Slaughterhouse Five by <PERSON>:
<PERSON> had a block of balsa wood which was supposed to be a foxhole pillow. He had a prophylactic kit containing two tough condoms 'For the Prevention of Disease Only!' He had a whistle he wasn't going to show anybody until he got promoted to corporal. He had a dirty picture of a woman attempting sexual intercourse with a Shetland pony. He had made <PERSON> admire that picture several times.
The woman and the pony were posed before velvet draperies which were fringed with deedlee-balls. They were flanked by Doric columns. 247
In front of one column was a potted palm. The Picture that <PERSON> had was a print of the first dirty photograph in history. The word photography was first used in 1839, and it was in that year, too, that <PERSON> revealed to the French Academy that an image formed on a silvered metal plate covered with a thin film of silver iodide could be developed in the presence of mercury vapor.
In 1841, only two years later, an assistant to Daguerre, <PERSON>, was arrested in the Tuileries Gardens for attempting to sell a gentleman a picture of the woman and the pony. That was where <PERSON> bought his picture,, too-in the Tuileries. <PERSON> argued that the picture was fine art, and that his intention was to make Greek mythology come alive. He said that columns and the potted palm proved that.
When asked which myth he meant to represent, <PERSON>, replied that there were thousands of myths like that, with the woman a mortal and the pony a god.
Is there any mention of this event ever occurring? It is like <PERSON> to mix up fictional and non-fictional characters and events and this one definitely did fit in nicely in his cynical portrayal of humanity anyway.
Does anyone have any reliable info on this one? Could it possibly be that it took only two years after photography was invented that it was first used in pornography? Or maybe it was an existing urban legend? Or <PERSON> just made it up? 321