A photo is being shared on social media claiming it is a 1955 picture showing Italy’s famous singer Julia Markin standing at a city square and auctioning her Brassiere. Sharing the photo, the post says- “In 1955, Italy’s famous singer Julia Markin stood at a city square, took out her bra, and asked people how much they would pay for it. People bid up to $3000. After the auction, Julia smiled and told the people how stupid they are that they are spending so much money on modest clothes for their sexual desires but cannot feed the poor people. I am deeply embarrassed and sorry for your humanity.” Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: 1955 photo showing Italy’s famous singer Julia Markin auctioning her Brassiere.
Fact: The image shared in the post shows actress Katie Holmes re-enacting an iconic moment of women’s rights activists in 1969. The image was clicked by photographer Zoey Grossman in 2018 as part of her story with Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine depicting iconic moments in history. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found in an article published by the Harper’s Bazaar website on 20 November 2018. The description of the photo states, “Katie Holmes pays homage to the demonstrator’s bravado.” The article gave the credit for the photo to Zoey Grossman.
When we searched for further sources, we found the same photo on the Instagram handle of Zoey Grossman. Zoey Grossman published this image on 20 December 2018 with the description, “Another image from my story with @harpersbazaarus depicting iconic moments in history. I got to work with the talented and amazing @katieholmes212 on this image to pay homage to a protester in 1969 for women’s rights. Thank you @glendabailey for including me in this.”
The photo shows American actress Katie Homes reenacting an iconic still of a women’s rights activist in 1969, which was also shared in the article published by the Harper’s Bazaar website in November 2018. A spokesperson of Harper’s Bazaar told AFP that the photo is from a photo shoot in December 2018/January 2019 and said that Katie Holmes was reenacting an image of a protestor outside a San Fransico department store in 1969. We could not find any news report about Italy singer Julia Markin auctioning her Brassiere in 1955.
To sum it up, actress Katie Holmes’s 2018 photo for a fashion magazine is shared as a picture of an Italian singer auctioning her Brassiere in 1955.
