The Danish photographer Bent Rej made a name for himself as an artist comfortable on the liberated side of life as a 25-year-old when a newspaper editor sent him to cover The Rolling Stones on the Scandinavian and German legs of their 1965 tour. This was the proverbial deep-end of counterculture photography, but with his quirky moustache and undeniable ability to cling to his talent amid the tumult of hedonist upheaval, he not or swam, he shouldered out a space for himself as one of the foremost culture photographers in the game.

One of the core tenets of his success was simple coolness. Cool is a much-maligned word by the cynics of this world, who think that it implies a level of vapidity. However, the timeless swagger that seeps out of Rej’s snaps is a profound middle finger in their direction. His empowering pictures display a perfect eye for showcasing the zeitgeist at its most crystalline. They make sure that the personality of the individual shines through, imbuing them with an aura of endowing bluster.

So, thanks to his experience photographing the likes of Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, The Faces and Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s, when FIAT reached out to him for their erotic calendar in the 1970s, he knew how to ensure the models had their say in how they came across. There is no voyeurism or objectification in these snaps, just a liberated sense of sexiness being celebrated from both ends of the lens. 

Above that, there is also a palpable sense of fun on display. This stretches over the wry portfolio description that the daughters of the late photographer have applied to his Pin-ups collection: “Some of the biggest Danish models of that time, and a lot of beautiful faces. Commercial assignment for FIAT car calendar back in the 1970s. Not the worst we imagine.”

In an era when the likes of Helmut Newton were quipping: “There must be a certain look of availability in the women I photograph. I think the woman who gives the appearance of being available is sexually much more exciting than a woman who’s completely distant. This sense of availability I find erotic.” There is something refreshingly reversed about that in Rej’s empowering and liberated snaps.

In the rock ‘n’ roll world, he was there to observe the skill of the performers and capture the intimate moments. It is a great credit to his work that he continued the same ethos over to a field where those norms are sometimes problematically reversed. In some ways, while music might have been his mainstay, this makes this rare commercial effort among his most definitive.