Hey Nude! Naked album photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono to be sold at auction after they are discovered in a loft

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Two rare vintage photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing naked have emerged for sale.

The images were used on the couple's 1968 album 'Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins', and were taken by them on a self-timer.

The photos are wider than the one used on the LP cover and show more clutter around the couple's feet.

Original: This vintage photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing for their 1968 album Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins is due to go under the hammer at auction

They have been put up for sale by a private owner who found them in the loft at the home of his late mother. He was stunned by the discovery and has no idea how she acquired them.

The LP showed the pair nude on the front and the reverse had them naked from behind.

Both original front and back images are going under the hammer at Duke's auctioneers in Dorchester, Dorset, and they have been given a pre-sale estimate of £700.

It was a controversial album cover and many record shops refused to stock it. Where it was sold it was handed over in a brown paper bag.

The album was the result of an all-night session of musical experimentation in Lennon's home studio.

The photographs were taken at Ringo Starr's basement apartment at Montagu Square, London, where Lennon and Ono stayed later that year.

Bare cheek of it: The 1968 album the pictures were used in was highly controversial and many shops refused to stock it. The pictures were taken on a self-timer

Matthew Denney, from Duke's, said: 'No-one knows how the photographs emerged in Dorset.

'The vendor found them in his mother's attic after she died and he has no idea how she came by them.

'These are wider shots than the ones produced on the album cover and Beatles experts we have spoken to are very interested in them.

'These are vintage photographs and there are already been quite a bit of interest in them.'

During the uproar about the album cover, Lennon said that is was not to do with the nudity itself, but because the pair looked so unattractive.

Indeed, he later described it as a picture of 'two slightly overweight ex-junkies'. The auction is on Thursday.

Famous: This Rolling Stone Magazine cover from January 22 1981 which shows John Lennon naked with Yoko Ono was voted the number one cover from the last 40 years in 2005. The photo was taken by photographer Annie Liebovitz in December 1980 on the last day of Lennon's life


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127716/Naked-album-photos-John-Lennon-Yoko-Ono-auctioned.html#ixzz1rlBkvbZc