Available From
Secret Magazine
Jurgen Boedt (ed.), Secret Fetish Photo Anthology
(Glitter), paperback, 196 pages, $50.
In its first years, Secret Magazine redefined the standards for fetish photography, publishing only the best work by skilled photographers. It challenged artists to do their best and forced other fetish magazines to raise their standards to catch up. The results are evident now in the late 90s with fetish art and photography given more attention by mainstream critics and more of it being produced and successfully marketed every year.
This superb collection of black and white images features the best photography from the first few years of Secret Magazine. It includes the work of Todd Friedman, Richard Kern, Craig Morey, Housk Randall, Trevor Watson, and about 40 others. Most of the images are of women, both dominant and submissive, but there are also a few men scattered through it. There is also a second volume that includes the work of Philippe Fichot, Steve Diet Goedde, Laura Graff, Eric Kroll, Gunter Wilhelm, and many other photographers.
Price: $34.99
(Taschen, 1998), Hardcover, 2444 pages (3 volumes), $49.99.
This is the magazine that followed John Willie's Bizarre (reviewed below). This reprint edition includes the first thirty-six issues that spanned the years from 1951 to 1959. Leonard Burtman's fetish magazine was more subdued in tone and more oriented toward fetish clothing than Willie's, but also more broadly focused with something for every admirer of the fetishized female form including feet, stockings, corsetry, leather, rubber, and more. Among the more than 2000 pages you will find some of Eric Stanton's early work including a number of his comic strips in serial order. It also contains numerous short stories and comic strips with a variety of plots including kidnapping, bondage, and forced feminization. There are numerous photographs of everyone's favorite bondage model, Betty Page, as well as Tana Louise, Judy O'Day,and numerous others. The fiction is pretty much what you would expect for 1950's underground sexuality. Like the stories in Bizarre they seem rather charming after all these years.
Price: $50.00
(Flash, 1995), paperback.
Gatewood has been documenting the sexual underground longer than anyone. This collection of his photographs is accompanied by numerous anecdotes from his career, particularly the early years. The photographs span several decades and would make an interesting historical document had he noted all their dates. Some of the best are those of bdsmers from the early 1970s. There are also a number of photographs of sexual celebrities including Annie Sprinkle, Fakir musafar, and Marco Vassi. As always, there are numerous depictions of piercing, one of his favorite topics. It is a worthy companion to his earlier book: Primitives. Also worth looking at is Gatewood's The Body and Beyond which contains some material reprinted from Primitives. If you're into blood play, True Blood (text by David Aaron Clark) is practically a must.
Edge Interactive sells Charles Gatewood: Erotic, Exotic and Profane, a huge collection of his work on CD-ROM.
Price: $34.97
(Edition Stemmle, 1998), Hardcover, 144 pages, $49.95
Goedde is well known to aficionados of fetish photography. His work has been regularly featured in Secret, Skin Two, Marquis, and other fetish magazines. This collection includes some of the best examples of both his color and black and white work. Beautiful women (and a few men) appear in skintight leather and rubber, boots, corsets, bondage gear, and other fetish attire. Goedde is blissfully, and quite happily, ignorant of most of the trends in his chosen genre (he claims never to have taken a single class in photography). His work rises above much of the recent explosion in fetish photography. While emphasizing their fetish attire, Goedde never loses his models in the latex leather and doesn't dehumanize them as Eric Kroll frequently does. Midori wrote an essay on fetish for the book and appears in some of the photographs.
Volume 2 of the Beauty of Fetish was published recently.
Goedde maintains a web page at which you can sample his work including photos from this book.
Price: $29.99
(Taschen, 1997), Hardcover, $29.99.
Photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern is famous for the transgressive films he made in the 1980s with Lydia Lunch. The best known of these is "Fingered" which features a road trip and hot sex scenes interspersed with extreme violence. This book showcases fifteen years of his photography in New York. Most of his models are nonprofessionals, which perhaps helped him escape some overdone clichés. He posed them nude and in lingerie; in bondage and in bathrooms. Many are smoking and others hold guns--two of his favorite themes. In one of the more memorable ones, a woman points a gun in right hand while holding a dildo to her crotch with her left. Many of the of women feature the hard-edged look of barely restrained violence that was a hallmark of his films. Kern's work continues to mark him as unique and exciting. There is also the usual postcard book.
Kern's X Girls contains some material not included in New York Girls, but is currently out of print.
Price: $20.99
(Taschen, 1996), paperback, $29.99.
Kloster is a freelance photographer with an an M.A. in Studio Art from New York University. She currently teaches photography at the New School for Social Research in New York and is the cofounder and editorial director of FAD magazine. Her work has been featured in numerous art gallery exhibitions in the United States and Europe. This is her first book. It is a collection of photographs of women in the New York bdsm scene. She was interested in focusing on female power, so almost all of them are of dominant women. Many are professional dominatrixes. Their clients make into a few of their shots, and there is also a good spread on an adult baby. Her photography is excellent. She captures the New York professional dominance scene better than anyone else has, but the subject matter does get a little repetitive. Typical of pro doms, most of her subjects invested hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on their wardrobes and then grabbed the cheapest whips they could find.
Her virtual gallery is quite impressive, and will give you a taste of her work.
Price: $31.50
(St. Martins, 1998), 112 pages, $45.00.
In this, her second book, Kloster examines a broader range of female sexuality. As in her first book, she is interested in exploring the intersection between female sexuality and female power. Topics range from fetish attire and bdsm to gender-bending. One of her favorite themes is a nude, or sexually provocative, woman in a public place. There are more couples in this collection and more action scenes. Even in static poses, there is a power to these women that indicates they don't sit still for long. Some of her subjects are coy and inviting, others are bold and challenging (some even stick their tongues out at you). All seem acutely conscious of the camera and the viewers gaze. This book clearly separates Kloster from most of her peers. Her attention to detail is more subtle, her vision broader, and her message clearer. She also seems to have a lot more fun with her work. The introduction of humor into several of the photographs is quite welcome. This book should mark Kloster as a major force in erotic photography.
See also Kloster's Illustrated Story of O.
(Taschen, 1996), 1824 pages, $39.99.
Published in the late forties and early fifties, the twenty-six issues of Bizarre Magazine prove that bdsm was alive and well back then. The many letters from his readers are particularly interesting and include a few bdsm celebrities like Fakir Musafar. John Willie is famous for his bdsm artwork. His drawings and stories continue to inspire peoples fantasies today. It should be no surprise that the republication of many of his stories and illustrations coincides with the sudden upsurge in interest in pony fantasies. Pony girls were the focus of his best stories and much of his artwork. Willie managed to stay one step ahead of the censors for many years, but was eventually forced to cease publication to avoid going to jail. This complete reprint of all twenty-six issues has preserved an important part of bdsm history and introduced Willie's extraordinary creation to a whole new generation of readers. It contains stories, photographs, drawings, and letters that are an almost inexhaustible source of ideas. Belier Press has recently released a complete (368 page) reprint of the Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, John Willie's oft-bound comic character who first appeared in Bizarre. It is more than twice the sixe of the previous Taschen "complete" reprint. Taschen's reprint of Bizzare is also not quite complete, but at least its close. Belier Press' website has all the details.
Price: $20.99
(Taschen, 1996), Hardcover, 216 pages, $29.95
Elmer Batters, who died in 1997, was the undisputed master of leg and foot fetish photography. His work appeared in a variety of magazines in the 1960s and 1970s including Nylon Jungle, Tip-Top, Nylon Double Take, and Black Silk Stockings. His was work was rediscovered in the 1990s and was extensively republished in Leg Show and similar magazines. This book has more than 200 photographs that span his forty-year career.
If you just can't get enough of his work, a huge second volume was recently released with more than 300 additional photographs of his. Its slipcase is a nylon stocking, and Leg Show's editor Dian Hanson wrote the introduction.
Elmer Batters, Legs
That Dance to Elmer's Tune
(Taschen, 1998), Hardcover, 360 pages, $70.00 (only $48.78 from Amazon).
Price: $48.99
(Taschen, 1997), Hardcover, 160 pages, $69.99.
Eric Stanton worked with the legendary Irving Klaw from the early 1950s until Klaw's death in 1964 and Bettie Page served as the inspiration for many of his drawings from this period. Since then he has continued to produce erotic illustrations and comic books on his own. Some of these were specially commissioned by wealthy clients. He is famous for his humorous drawings and especially his comics. Many of them are reminiscent of John Willie's Gwendolyn, featuring such characters as Blunder Broad and Sweet Gwen. Unlike Willie, who usually drew women submissive, Stanton generally places them in dominant roles, often being served by or tormenting adoring men.
Also worth looking at is Stanton's Dominant Wives & Other Stories (30% off from Amazon) which contains over 1000 illustrations and 28 of his illustrated tales, almost all of Dominant women.
Sadly, Stanton died this past March. His website
is still up, should you care to see samples of his work.
Price: $19.99
(Taschen, 1996), Paperback, 200 pages, $24.99.
Kroll's work as a fetish photographer is highly regarded, and he was doing it long before it was popular. This is one of the better collections of his fetish work and features a lot of women in latex and similar fetish attire. Some of the photographs have also been reprinted in a book of postcards, should you care to add a little spice to a postal worker's life.
If you like Kroll's work, you might also want to look at Beauty Parade (Taschen, 1997) which Amazon sells in hardcover for only $20.99. It includes the photographs that Kroll "wasn't comfortable including in Fetish Girls," including just about every fetish imaginable. In general, there is less clothing, more nudity, and a more obvious bdsm context for many of the photos. It is also available as a postcard book.
Edge Interactive sells Fetish,
a CD-ROM with more than 500 of Kroll's fetish photographs, and Kroll maintains
a website that showcases some
of his work.
Amazon.com
Price: $38.50
Nobuyoshi Araki, Shikijyo (Sexual Desire)
(Stemmle, 1997), 168 pages, $55.00
This Japanese erotic photographer has made quite a splash over the last two years. This book showcases his work in full color, and includes a number of bondage photos and especially suspension scenes. If you like his work, you might want to look at Tokyo Lucky Hole (704 pages, $23.99) which is his photographic exploration of Tokyo's sexual underworld.
(Taschen, 1998), Hardcover, 350 pages, $69.69.
Born Touko Laaksonen in 1920 in Kaarina, Finland, Tom of Finland drew his first pictures of enormously muscled gay men before World War II. During the 1950s he began to submit his work to bodybuilding magazines in the United States under his pseudonym and built a following among the burgeoning gay community. He is best known for his drawings of powerfully belt, enormously endowed men, often in leather and in bdsm scenes. His drawings defined the look of an entire generation of leathermen and continue to be imitated by a host of admirers. This book is the most complete collection of his work to date. It contains sketches from his early childhood and runs through his entire career to his death in 1991. It contains many rare images.
There is also an excellent biography of Tom of Finland by F. Valentine Hooven which contains a fair amount of his artwork. Amazon sells it in paperback for $10.36.
(St. Martin's Press, 1994), paperback, 128 pages, $14.95.
This book has about 100 photos of Page, most of them by Bunny Yeager with a few by Klaw. All are top notch, but they tend toward the classic pinup pictures rather than any of her bondage work. Yeager reminisces about Page in the text, but doesn't reveal anything particularly interesting. There is the usual brief biography of Page's career in the fifties and a short piece by Page that brings her story up to the nineties. There's a list of page's film credits and magazine appearances that might be useful to collectors.
Yeager was one of the first women to get behind the camera and enter what had previously been an entirely male profession. If you like her work, you might also want to look at her book Bunny's Honeys which showcases her work over the years with a variety of models.
(General Pub Group, 1998), paperback, 288 pages, $19.95.
This is the best collection of the celebrated pinup's photographs and it is also one of the few in which she actively collaborated. Page herself wrote the forward to this profusely illustrated book. It includes a biography of Page, though of course it glosses over the less pleasant aspects of her later life. This book easily contains the best collection of her photographs under one cover--more than 500 in all. There are many you won't find anywhere else. If you're a fan of Bettie Page, this is the book to get. It's out of print at the moment, but I can't imagine it will stay that way for long.
Another Page book worth looking at is: Betty
Page: Queen of Pin-up (Taschen, 1993), $12.99.
This was the first book to chronicle Page's career, and was just recently
reprinted. It has a good collection of black and white as well as color
photographs of Page by Irving & Paula Klaw, Art Amsie, Bunny Yeager, and
others. Brief text (in English, German, and French) describes her career
in the fifties.
(Dark Horse Books, 1996), paperback, 96 pages, $19.95.
Silke is a professional artist, photographer and art director who used
to publish Cinema Magazine. His book is probably the most interesting
one on Page. He does an excellent job of placing Page in a cultural context,
tracing the development of the pinup girl from through Page's original
career in the fifties, and then her rediscovery several decades later.
He may delve too deeply into art history for some tastes, but his analysis
is quite good. Page is more than just another pinup girl. Silke explores
the cult that has grown up around her and the phenomenon she has become
in the nineties. This is the most scholarly of the books on this curvy
icon. It also includes a good collection of some of the best photographs
and drawings of Page.
Price: $25.00
(Shaynew, 1992), paperback (8.5x11), $25.00.
Rosen was one of the first friendly photographers to look at the bdsm scene. These black and white photographs show real people enjoying a variety of bdsm activities. They were not staged, rather Rosen sat in on and photographed real scenes by experienced practitioners. His subjects include Cleo duBois and Sybil Holiday. These are often reprinted, so you've probably seen some of his work. Sandmutopia Guardian # 1 had a feature on this book and included a number of his photographs, so you can get a feel for his style there.
He has since followed it with three other books: Sexual Art : Photographs That Test the Limits (1996); Sexual Portraits: Photographs of Radical Sexuality (1994); and Lust & Romance: Rated X Fine Art Photographs (1998). All three are less specifically bdsm (especially his most recent) and were shot in his studio, but they are still fun and decidedly kinky.
Naked Libido, Eugene Zakusilo, Trevor Watson, and Ralph Steinmeier
(Libido, 1999), paperback, 104 pages
An interesting collection showcasing the work of these three photographers. Steinmeier's photos are explicitly sexual featuring women in the midst of orgasmic sex. Zakusilo emphasizes clever composition. Watson does his usual superb job with fetish and bdsm themes. For more of Watson's work see Girls Behaving Badly .
David Wood (Editor), Torture Garden: A Photographic Archive of the
New Flesh
(Subterranean, 1996), paperback (8.5x11), 160 pages, $24.95.
Photographers Alan Sivroni and Jeremy Cadaver have captured the energy and excitement of the world's most famous (and probably largest) fetish club, London's Torture Garden. More than 300 color and black and white photographs taken over several years demonstrate why the club has been so successful and showcase the wildest of fetish fashion. Roughly half are of performers and action at the club while the other half are posed shots of various celebrities and club customers.
A second volume, Body Probe: Torture Garden 2 - Mutant Flesh and Cyber Primitives, is due out soon and will contain interviews with numerous fetish celebrities as well as more pictures from the famous club.