Bunny Yeager

As a photographer, Yeager was technically skilled and among the first to shoot models outdoors using natural light. She met Bettie Page in 1954 and took over 1,000 pictures of her that year, helping to make Page famous. Their collaboration produced some of the most memorable erotica on record, including the January 1955 Playboy centerfold and a series with live cheetahs. Yeager shot eight Playboy centerfolds and worked extensively with the magazine. She also photographed Ursula Andress emerging from the water in Jamaica for the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No. Her work appeared in Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and other mainstream publications. In the 1970s, she stopped working for men's magazines, calling them "smutty."

Yeager was also a prolific author, writing over 24 books, including "How I Photograph Myself" and "Photographing the Female Figure," which sold over 300,000 copies. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, including a 2010 retrospective at The Andy Warhol Museum. She was cited as an influence on artists like Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman. Yeager married twice and had two daughters. She died on May 25, 2014, at age 85, of congestive heart failure. Her legacy as a groundbreaking female photographer in a male-dominated field endures.