BRILLIANCE WITH A
DASH OF
Wickedly
Twisted
AND A SPLASH OF
KINKY FUN
Gerry Pelser. What can we say? Not much is needed, since his work speaks for itself. He was kind enough to answer some questions and we at alt.SA enjoyed listening to them. Refreshing stuff.
You have taken some really amazing photographs. What attracted you to fetish photography?
Why thank you, thank you very much.
I don't think I had a choice, really. I've always been a bit weird, kinda odd. I've been as kinky as a coil spring since I could remember. Ropes and chains excited me, literally, since I was a little boy.
And I've always been very creative, artistic. In my childhood and late teenage years, I spent a lot of time drawing. I discovered photography at the age of 19, and after the prerequisite time you spend figuring out who and what you are in life, in my mid 30s I managed to combine my kinky side with my love for photography.
Looking back now it was always going to be inevitable, though heck knows I never intentionally chose this path - it chose me.
How long have you been taking photos? Fetish or vanilla.
I fell in love with the art of photography at the ripe old age of 19. I studied graphic design at some two-bit vocational college, and photography was part of that course. I loved it. But I sucked. It was a beguiling but elusive and frustrating medium. I went digital in 2008, and the world quite literally changed from there. Digital allowed me to do what I wanted to do, to take complete control over the process of creating the image - a control that is very difficult to obtain with film photography. So, to answer your question, depending how you look at it, either a whole 20 years or just a mere six!
Are you also active in the scene or how would you describe your BDSM interests?
I used to be extremely active in the BDSM community. I was famous, and probably one of the most well known male pro-Doms in Joburg, if not the country at the time. It was great, I loved it, but tall trees catch the most wind, and some political bullshit left me very disillusioned with "the scene", and I retired. I lived a very vanilla life for a while, but I'm starting to wet my toes again. But this time I'm flying low - I hardly know anyone in the scene anymore, I'm no longer the high flying famous face, and I have no desire to be. I'm very low-key nowadays.
My BDSM interests... I'm a purist, and an aesthete. I am not into "extreme". I'm into beauty and purity. Sounds like bullshit, huh? But its true. I became good in ropes because I loved the way it looked, the beauty of a well-tied female form. I love the feeling that restraint gives - whether you are giving it or taking it. Its bondage for the sake of it, the art of it. Not bondage so that I can render you helpless and have my way with you. It needs to be pretty, elegant. I don't do smut or porn in my photography, and I don't do smut or porn in real life. I'm no prude, but leaving a few things for the imagination is always more enticing than the explicit. It's just way too easy to be a pervert in BDSM, and that is something I do not subscribe to.
People have ridiculed me for this, but I stand by it: BDSM is not always about sex. Heck, in my life, it hardly ever is. I believe this is why I was so famous as a pro-Dom in my younger days - I offered a service certain people needed without the need to turn it into a sexual fantasy. As said, it's just bondage and fetish for the sake of it, not the sex of it. Kinky sex exists, sure, and it's fun and all, but for me there has always been something a lot more fundamental than the base instinct of sex about the art of restraint. I guess the word "art" explains that.
In your view, what is the difference between fetish photography as an art form and as porn?
Oh boy, how much time do we have?
Porn is in the eye of the beholder. There is no clear line to what I, or anyone, can say "this is porn" and "this is art". As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, and I'm paraphrasing here: "I don't know what porn is, but I know it when I see it. " (No, I'm not that clever, I just looked it up on wikipedia!)
I have taken nude photos involving bondage gear that is as far removed from sexual connotations as its possible to be. I also have some photos of fully clothed women that can only be described as "sex on a chair". But these are MY opinions. I've realised in my journey through life there really are different strokes for different folks. What one person sees as totally innocuous and bland, others can find offensive or the greatest turn-on. I've learned not to judge, or expect, anything from any said photo. The same photo can be classed as porn by one person and seen as valid art by another. I don't bother with those distinctions, as I have no control over them. I see my own work as art, and if someone else wants to see it as porn, that is their right. Or, as my pal Shirley said a million years ago: "get your dirty mind out of my beautiful work of art".
What kind of models do best in fetish photography?
Ooh, brilliant question - can we take out a billboard ad and post this answer?
Here is the rub: before one can be a fetish model, you first need to be a model. "Fetish" is the adjective here, not the noun.
I meet too many ladies who think because they listen to obscure Goth and/or metal bands and have a "thing" for corsets they can be fetish or alternative models. No honey, just because you are goff and like your fashionably laddered stockings and have a very fashionable non-conformist tattoo or two, does not make you a fetish model - it makes you a goff with bad tattoos and an ill-fitting corset.
The fetish models that I worked with, that probably got me into this magazine today, are first and foremost "normal" models - working models that are as at home doing summer fun in crop-tops and slops and candy stripe bikinis as they are being tied up wearing fetish gear. If I can give one piece of advice for any lady wanting to be a fetish model: learn to be a "vanilla" model first. The rules in front of the camera doesn't change - and just because you like taking your kit off and getting roped up, does not mean you'll be a good model.
There way too many Kat von D wannabes walking around, seeing only the tats and the funky hair, and not seeing what else Kat has underneath the ink. Same goes for Dita von Teese. There's a lot more to Auntie Heather than a fancy 50's hairdo and a liking for Marilyn Manson. It's called "presence", and if you aint got it, not amount of frilly corsets and tattoos are gonna give it to you.
Just like one has to be a photographer before you can be a fetish photographer, so it is with models.
I know its not the answer a lot of the readers want to hear, but here it is, a fetish model is just a normal model with strings attached.
There is a theme than run from your fetish photography through to some of your more 'vanilla' work. Gloves. It blurs the border between fetish and vanilla. Is that on purpose or am I just looking at it that way because I'm a kinkster myself?
Oh no, it's very much on purpose!
My "style" has once been described as "implied fetish", and I think that is probably the greatest compliment I've ever got! As I said above, I was a kink since I could remember, and I cannot change that. Even in my 'nilla work, I have to put my signature on things - I have to, it's what I do!
The glove is that signature. I have a well known glove fetish, except, that is a bit inaccurate. I have a hand-fetish. I love hands, they are so... I'm not gonna ramble on here, anyone with a fetish knows that one really cannot explain or justify it. Its just there. The glove is just a very beautiful cherry on an already enticing cake. Helmut Newton once said "no woman is truly naked unless she is wearing high heels". I'll change that slightly and say "no woman is truly naked unless she's wearing gloves".
But that's for the infamous nude. In the vanilla world, the gloves just adds a little element of something extra, something special. Gloves can be sexy, elegant, and oh so pleasing to the eye without shouting "look at me, I'm a kinkster!".
I also love gloves for the way it makes models act and pose. A lot of models, even experienced ones, sometimes do not know what to do with their hands if they are posing. (Tying them up solves this problem). But give a model a set of gloves and suddenly she turns into a vamp and even the most prudish conservative ladies turn into pin-up queens for some reason. If there's a psychologist out there who would like to do a study on this, let me know...
I have quite the glove collection now, though it always shrinks a bit. I've had more than one model refuse to give my gloves back after a shoot. I protest a bit, but not too much, it's always great finding people who share the same things as you do, and a surprising amount of ladies that I worked with, in fetish or vanilla, love the gloves!
Yes, I admit, I love gloves - it drives my fiancée crazy when she sees my work "You gotta stop with the gloves", she says. Maybe she's right. Nah... she's always right, but in this instance, I'll carry on!
What do you find are the most popular kinds of fetish photos?
Well, this ties in on the question above - I've found many of my photos reposted on blogs, "stolen", favourited, etc, and I've noticed a theme here - the work of mine that gets the most attention, gets the most hits, are my glove pics. Google image search routinely finds my work on glove fetishist sites.
Secondly, my smoking pics. I've never smoked in my life, never even taken a puff out of curiosity, but I'm no militant anti-smoker. I use cigarettes a lot in my photography. A cigarette is an odd thing - a woman smoking can be the ugliest, most off-putting sight a man can see, and it can be the most incredibly alluring thing the eyes can behold. Most models smoke (that stereotype is true), and if a cigarette makes her feel more relaxed, more comfortable, and if it gives her something to do with her (gloved) hands... why not? Google images has found tons of my work on smoking fetish sites. Until a few years ago, I did not even know smoking fetish sites existed until I got a report of a stolen image on one!
These two themes get a lot more hits and views than the more bondage-related ones. I guess maybe because its more accessible to the average person - is a lot easier to be a fetishist with a glove than with a handcuff. I guess despite 50 shades, people are still skittish about the restraint side of things, the subtle stuff is what I get the most demand for.
What parts of the human body do you like to photograph most?
Faces and hands. I discovered that I'm a portrait photographer. In all the thousands of photos I've taken, maybe three are "headless", and about 10 percent are full-length bodies. The rest are all faces with an element of the hand involved.
I love nudes, but I don't do an "unjustified" nude. It took me about 4 years of working with models before I did my first nude. Everyone ahs bad days at the office - and if you have a bad shoot with a clothed girl, you write it off and you go on - you muck up a nude, and you are suddenly a useless untalented pervert who just wanna get girls out of their panties so you can get your rocks off.
When busy with a fetish shoot, what are the most common fears that the models and you as photographer have?
I really cannot speak for the models, but when working with a new model, there is always the fear that we won't "click". This is as true for fetish as it is for 'nilla shoots.
It happens - we don't always get on with everyone we meet. I've worked with a few models that well, we just don't see eye to eye. Again - as true for 'nilla as it is for fetish. This is nobody's fault, it just happens, and sometimes, yeah, things just do not turn out as planned.
luckily, a few times things have clocked incredibly, and I'm the proud owner of four muses. there are four models I shoot with regularly that always push my buttons in the right way, inspire me to do more, better. I thank these ladies, if not for them, I'd be miserable sod a lot more often than I am now.
Your work is mostly studio based. Why is that?
My psychologist will have a field day with this answer: I like the control!
Well, that is part of the answer. As a photographer first, and a fetish photographer second, I love the control the studio gives me over the light. If this was a photography mag and not a kinky one, I'll rant about how important light is, and how photography is all about the light, yadda yadda yadda, but I won't. So I'll just say in a studio, I can take control of the light. I'm not dependent on weather, sunshine, location or whatever, I can use the light the way I want to. I've done too many location shots where the light just isn't right, or the weather doesn't play along, and that spoils the fun. Dealing with the light you've not wanted is part of the difference between a good photographer and a great one, and thanks to some unplanned weather I've gotten some great unplanned shots, but those are the exception, not the rule. I like to know that when I go to the studio, I am in control of the light, and if the shoots don't come out as I planned, I cannot blame anyone but myself.
The second part is I like the intimacy of the studio. I have a golden rule in my studio - if you are not involved with the shoot, you are not in the studio. Mothers, boyfriends, hired muscle... sorry, there is a few very nice restaurants around my studio where you can wait while I do my shoot, but you are not in the studio watching. The privacy the studio gives a better environment to connect with the models/clients, and that gives a better result. Shooting on location does not always bring one that. This shows in the photo. And the energy is brilliant. Three people: a model, a make-up artist, and me. Just the three of us, and we make magic. I always say I don't take photos so I can have photos, the very act of making them is what's important to me. Having pretty pictures to look at afterwards is a bonus.
Props. Tell us about your treasure chest full of props!
Treasure chest, huh? Who have you been speaking to? I assume you are talking about my kinky treasures, not my photographic one...
Well, firstly as alluded to earlier, there is my glove box. I do not know how many pairs of gloves I have, but it's a lot. This box goes with me to every shoot - in fact, it never leaves the boot of my car! I can hardly go through a winter without adding something to my collection. Antique shops sometimes offer up some amazing glovely treasures too.
Then I have two toyboxes, one rope-bag, and one "hard bondage" bag. The rope bag contains heck knows how many meters of different ropes. I have everything from 5mm cotton braid sash-cord to half-inch twisted sisal for that more authentic look. And everything in-between. Then my hard box contain things like my collars, leashes, chains, locks, and of course, handcuffs.
Handcuffs... Yeah. one could probably call me obsessed. I won't argue. Let's see now, two pairs of chained police-issue cuffs, one set hinged police issue, one set sex-shop cheapies (don't ever buy those, folks!), one set separated handcuffs, two sets of ankle shackles, two sets of leather cuffs and my pride and joy, an antique set of Hiatt Darby cuffs, which has been dated to Victorian era England - pre 1820 - and they still work fine! I guess they don't make 'em like they used to. Those cuffs have also gotten me on the cover of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Yes, really. It was just a stock photo I took, but still...
Is there a shoot that you're burning to do but it's too wild and kinky for even us fetish folk to understand? If so, do share!
Wow... uh... I can't think of something that is too wild and kinky, but there are two shoots I want to do that I just did not get the right model and/or time and/or elements together to do.
I've been fortunate enough that I've managed to capture most, if not all, of the things I wanted to do photographically. One shoot I completed recently is maybe a bit bizarre even for kinky folk. I've always had enormous problems with my teeth and jaws, I spent more time in orthodontists' chairs than I did eating warm meals. I spent a total of 11 years in braces, and I still have some orthodontic hardware I have to wear to keep my teeth from falling out. It was quite a painful experience, both physically and emotionally, and the only way I survived all this hardware and pain was to fetishise it. I always said I want to change the stereotype from the guy or girl who wears braces from being the geek and butt end of every joke, to making braces and headgear sexy again. I found the right model, and I think we nailed it. I managed to fetishise orthodontic headgear! A few people told me that I'm just strange and bizarre - they are right of course - but when the photos went out, the response was amazing and a few people said they never thought that braces could be made to look sexy.
However, a few things still elude me.
I always wanted to do a shoot in the Namib desert. I have this images in my mind of a naked woman tied up in the most beautiful shibari walking across the top of a sand dune. I think the sense of isolation and desolation that can give could be awesome. I'll do this one as soon as my application to win the lottery is processed.
And then, I have in my mind a 12-hour shoot. Take one model, naked, fully made up, and put her in handcuffs and chain her to the wall with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a camera on multiple exposure taking a pic every 10 minutes for 12 hours. I think the progression of that series, of change in demeanour over a 12-hour long bondage could be photographically, and psychologically, fascinating. The "before and after" portrait of that shoot should tell a great story. I had a model volunteer for that shoot, but she buggered off to Zurich to go study before we could find a good place to do it in. (funny both these wish-list shoots are out of studio, huh?)
Lastly, is there anything else you want to share with us? Upcoming plans, exhibitions maybe?
uh... I wish! if anyone wants to curate an exhibit of me... Nah, I just do what I does, no big plans. Maybe I should have. Why, do you have any suggestions?
19. I studied graphic design at some two-bit vocational college, and photography was part of that course. I loved it. But I sucked.
It was a beguiling but elusive and frustrating medium. I went digital in 2008, and the world quite literally changed from there.
Digital allowed me to do what I wanted to do, to take complete control over the process of creating the image - a control that is very difficult to obtain with film photography. So, to answer your question, depending how you look at it, either a whole 20 years or just a mere six!
Are you also active in the scene, or how would you describe your BDSM interests?
I used to be extremely active in the BDSM community. I was famous, and probably one of the most well known male pro-Doms in Joburg, if not the country at the time.
It was great, I loved it, but tall trees catch the most wind, and some political bullshit left me very disillusioned with "the scene", and I retired.
I lived a very vanilla life for a while, but I'm starting to wet my toes again. But this time I'm flying low - I hardly know anyone in the scene any more, I'm no longer the high flying famous face, and I have no desire to be. I'm very low-key nowadays.
My BDSM interests... I'm a purist, and an aesthete. I am not into "extreme". I'm into beauty and purity. Sounds like bullshit, huh? But its true. I became good in ropes because I loved the way it looked, the beauty of a well-tied female form. I love the feeling that restraint gives - whether you are giving it or taking it. Its bondage for the sake of it, the art of it. Not bondage so that I can render you helpless and have my way with you. It needs to be pretty, elegant. I don't do smut or porn in my photography, and I don't do smut or porn in real life. I'm no prude, but leaving a few things for the imagination is always more enticing than the explicit. It's just way too easy to be a pervert in BDSM, and that is something I do not subscribe to.
People have ridiculed me for this, but I stand by it: BDSM is not always about sex. Heck, in my life, it hardly ever is. I believe this is why I was so famous as a pro-Dom in my younger days - I offered a service certain people needed without the need to turn it into a sexual fantasy. As said, it's just bondage and fetish for the sake of it, not the sex of it. Kinky sex exists, sure, and it's fun and all, but for me there has always been something a lot more fundamental than the base instinct of sex about the art of restraint. I guess the word "art" explains that.
In your view, what is the difference between fetish photography as an art form and as porn?
Oh boy, how much time do we have?
Porn is in the eye of the beholder. There is no clear line to what I, or anyone, can say "this is porn" and "this is art". As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, and I'm paraphrasing here: "I don't know what porn is, but I know it when I see it. " (No, I'm not that clever, I just looked it up on wikipedia!)
I have taken nude photos involving bondage gear that is as far removed from sexual connotations as its possible to be. I also have some photos of fully clothed women that can only be described as "sex on a chair". But these are MY opinions. I've realised in my journey through life there really are different strokes for different folks. What one person sees as totally innocuous and bland, others can find offensive or the greatest turn-on. I've learned not to judge, or expect, anything from any said photo. The same photo can be classed as porn by one person and seen as valid art by another. I don't bother with those distinctions, as I have no control over them. I see my own work as art, and if someone else wants to see it as porn, that is their right. Or, as my pal Shirley said a million years ago: "get your dirty mind out of my beautiful work of art".
What kind of models do best in fetish photography?
Ooh, brilliant question - can we take out a billboard ad and post this answer?
Here is the rub: before one can be a fetish model, you first need to be a model. "Fetish" is the adjective here, not the noun.
I meet too many ladies who think because they listen to obscure Goth and/or metal bands and have a "thing" for corsets they can be fetish or alternative models. No honey, just because you are goff and like your fashionably laddered stockings and have a very fashionable non-conformist tattoo or two, does not make you a fetish model - it makes you a goff with bad tattoos and an ill-fitting corset.
The fetish models that I worked with, that probably got me into this magazine today, are first and foremost "normal" models - working models that are as at home doing summer fun in crop-tops and slops and candy stripe bikinis as they are being tied up wearing fetish gear. If I can give one piece of advice for any lady wanting to be a fetish model: learn to be a "vanilla" model first. The rules in front of the camera doesn't change - and just because you like taking your kit off and getting roped up, does not mean you'll be a good model.
There way too many Kat von D wannabes walking around, seeing only the tats and the funky hair, and not seeing what else Kat has underneath the ink. Same goes for Dita von Teese. There's a lot more to Auntie Heather than a fancy 50's hairdo and a liking for Marilyn Manson. It's called "presence", and if you aint got it, not amount of frilly corsets and tattoos are gonna give it to you.
Just like one has to be a photographer before you can be a fetish photographer, so it is with models.
I know its not the answer a lot of the readers want to hear, but here it is, a fetish model is just a normal model with strings attached.
There is a theme than run from your fetish photography through to some of your more 'vanilla' work. Gloves. It blurs the border between fetish and vanilla. Is that on purpose or am I just looking at it that way because I'm a kinkster myself?
Oh no, it's very much on purpose!
My "style" has once been described as "implied fetish", and I think that is probably the greatest compliment I've ever got! As I said above, I was a kink since I could remember, and I cannot change that. Even in my 'nilla work, I have to put my signature on things - I have to, it's what I do!
The glove is that signature. I have a well known glove fetish, except, that is a bit inaccurate. I have a hand-fetish. I love hands, they are so... I'm not gonna ramble on here, anyone with a fetish knows that one really cannot explain or justify it. Its just there. The glove is just a very beautiful cherry on an already enticing cake. Helmut Newton once said "no woman is truly naked unless she is wearing high heels". I'll change that slightly and say "no woman is truly naked unless she's wearing gloves".
But that's for the infamous nude. In the vanilla world, the gloves just adds a little element of something extra, something special. Gloves can be sexy, elegant, and oh so pleasing to the eye without shouting "look at me, I'm a kinkster!".
I also love gloves for the way it makes models act and pose. A lot of models, even experienced ones, sometimes do not know what to do with their hands if they are posing. (Tying them up solves this problem). But give a model a set of gloves and suddenly she turns into a vamp and even the most prudish conservative ladies turn into pin-up queens for some reason. If there's a psychologist out there who would like to do a study on this, let me know...
I have quite the glove collection now, though it always shrinks a bit. I've had more than one model refuse to give my gloves back after a shoot. I protest a bit, but not too much, it's always great finding people who share the same things as you do, and a surprising amount of ladies that I worked with, in fetish or vanilla, love the gloves!
Yes, I admit, I love gloves - it drives my fiancée crazy when she sees my work "You gotta stop with the gloves", she says. Maybe she's right. Nah... she's always right, but in this instance, I'll carry on!
What do you find are the most popular kinds of fetish photos?
Well, this ties in on the question above - I've found many of my photos reposted on blogs, "stolen", favourited, etc, and I've noticed a theme here - the work of mine that gets the most attention, gets the most hits, are my glove pics. Google image search routinely finds my work on glove fetishist sites.
Secondly, my smoking pics. I've never smoked in my life, never even taken a puff out of curiosity, but I'm no militant anti-smoker. I use cigarettes a lot in my photography. A cigarette is an odd thing - a woman smoking can be the ugliest, most off-putting sight a man can see, and it can be the most incredibly alluring thing the eyes can behold. Most models smoke (that stereotype is true), and if a cigarette makes her feel more relaxed, more comfortable, and if it gives her something to do with her (gloved) hands... why not? Google images has found tons of my work on smoking fetish sites. Until a few years ago, I did not even know smoking fetish sites existed until I got a report of a stolen image on one!
These two themes get a lot more hits and views than the more bondage-related ones. I guess maybe because its more accessible to the average person - is a lot easier to be a fetishist with a glove than with a handcuff. I guess despite 50 shades, people are still skittish about the restraint side of things, the subtle stuff is what I get the most demand for.
What parts of the human body do you like to photograph most?
Faces and hands. I discovered that I'm a portrait photographer. In all the thousands of photos I've taken, maybe three are "headless", and about 10 percent are full-length bodies. The rest are all faces with an element of the hand involved.
I love nudes, but I don't do an "unjustified" nude. It took me about 4 years of working with models before I did my first nude. Everyone ahs bad days at the office - and if you have a bad shoot with a clothed girl, you write it off and you go on - you muck up a nude, and you are suddenly a useless untalented pervert who just wanna get girls out of their panties so you can get your rocks off.
When busy with a fetish shoot, what are the most common fears that the models and you as photographer have?
I really cannot speak for the models, but when working with a new model, there is always the fear that we won't "click". This is as true for fetish as it is for 'nilla shoots.
It happens - we don't always get on with everyone we meet. I've worked with a few models that well, we just don't see eye to eye. Again - as true for 'nilla as it is for fetish. This is nobody's fault, it just happens, and sometimes, yeah, things just do not turn out as planned.
luckily, a few times things have clocked incredibly, and I'm the proud owner of four muses. there are four models I shoot with regularly that always push my buttons in the right way, inspire me to do more, better. I thank these ladies, if not for them, I'd be miserable sod a lot more often than I am now.
Your work is mostly studio based. Why is that?
My psychologist will have a field day with this answer: I like the control!
Well, that is part of the answer. As a photographer first, and a fetish photographer second, I love the control the studio gives me over the light. If this was a photography mag and not a kinky one, I'll rant about how important light is, and how photography is all about the light, yadda yadda yadda, but I won't. So I'll just say in a studio, I can take control of the light. I'm not dependent on weather, sunshine, location or whatever, I can use the light the way I want to. I've done too many location shots where the light just isn't right, or the weather doesn't play along, and that spoils the fun. Dealing with the light you've not wanted is part of the difference between a good photographer and a great one, and thanks to some unplanned weather I've gotten some great unplanned shots, but those are the exception, not the rule. I like to know that when I go to the studio, I am in control of the light, and if the shoots don't come out as I planned, I cannot blame anyone but myself.
The second part is I like the intimacy of the studio. I have a golden rule in my studio - if you are not involved with the shoot, you are not in the studio. Mothers, boyfriends, hired muscle... sorry, there is a few very nice restaurants around my studio where you can wait while I do my shoot, but you are not in the studio watching. The privacy the studio gives a better environment to connect with the models/clients, and that gives a better result. Shooting on location does not always bring one that. This shows in the photo. And the energy is brilliant. Three people: a model, a make-up artist, and me. Just the three of us, and we make magic. I always say I don't take photos so I can have photos, the very act of making them is what's important to me. Having pretty pictures to look at afterwards is a bonus.
Props. Tell us about your treasure chest full of props!
Treasure chest, huh? Who have you been speaking to? I assume you are talking about my kinky treasures, not my photographic one...
Well, firstly as alluded to earlier, there is my glove box. I do not know how many pairs of gloves I have, but it's a lot. This box goes with me to every shoot - in fact, it never leaves the boot of my car! I can hardly go through a winter without adding something to my collection. Antique shops sometimes offer up some amazing glovely treasures too.
Then I have two toyboxes, one rope-bag, and one "hard bondage" bag. The rope bag contains heck knows how many meters of different ropes. I have everything from 5mm cotton braid sash-cord to half-inch twisted sisal for that more authentic look. And everything in-between. Then my hard box contain things like my collars, leashes, chains, locks, and of course, handcuffs.
Handcuffs... Yeah. one could probably call me obsessed. I won't argue. Let's see now, two pairs of chained police-issue cuffs, one set hinged police issue, one set sex-shop cheapies (don't ever buy those, folks!), one set separated handcuffs, two sets of ankle shackles, two sets of leather cuffs and my pride and joy, an antique set of Hiatt Darby cuffs, which has been dated to Victorian era England - pre 1820 - and they still work fine! I guess they don't make 'em like they used to. Those cuffs have also gotten me on the cover of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Yes, really. It was just a stock photo I took, but still...
Is there a shoot that you're burning to do but it's too wild and kinky for even us fetish folk to understand? If so, do share!
Wow... uh... I can't think of something that is too wild and kinky, but there are two shoots I want to do that I just did not get the right model and/or time and/or elements together to do.
I've been fortunate enough that I've managed to capture most, if not all, of the things I wanted to do photographically. One shoot I completed recently is maybe a bit bizarre even for kinky folk. I've always had enormous problems with my teeth and jaws, I spent more time in orthodontists' chairs than I did eating warm meals. I spent a total of 11 years in braces, and I still have some orthodontic hardware I have to wear to keep my teeth from falling out. It was quite a painful experience, both physically and emotionally, and the only way I survived all this hardware and pain was to fetishise it. I always said I want to change the stereotype from the guy or girl who wears braces from being the geek and butt end of every joke, to making braces and headgear sexy again. I found the right model, and I think we nailed it. I managed to fetishise orthodontic headgear! A few people told me that I'm just strange and bizarre - they are right of course - but when the photos went out, the response was amazing and a few people said they never thought that braces could be made to look sexy.
However, a few things still elude me.
I always wanted to do a shoot in the Namib desert. I have this images in my mind of a naked woman tied up in the most beautiful shibari walking across the top of a sand dune. I think the sense of isolation and desolation that can give could be awesome. I'll do this one as soon as my application to win the lottery is processed.
And then, I have in my mind a 12-hour shoot. Take one model, naked, fully made up, and put her in handcuffs and chain her to the wall with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a camera on multiple exposure taking a pic every 10 minutes for 12 hours. I think the progression of that series, of change in demeanour over a 12-hour long bondage could be photographically, and psychologically, fascinating. The "before and after" portrait of that shoot should tell a great story. I had a model volunteer for that shoot, but she buggered off to Zurich to go study before we could find a good place to do it in. (funny both these wish-list shoots are out of studio, huh?)
Lastly, is there anything else you want to share with us? Upcoming plans, exhibitions maybe?
uh... I wish! if anyone wants to curate an exhibit of me... Nah, I just do what I does, no big plans. Maybe I should have. Why, do you have any suggestions?
nowadays.
My BDSM interests...I'm a purist, and an aesthete.
I am not into "extreme". I'm into beauty and purity. Sounds like bullshit, huh? But it's true.
I became good in ropes because I loved the way it looked, the beauty of a well-tied female form. I love the feeling that restraint gives - whether you are giving it or taking it.
It's bondage for the sake of it, the art of it. Not bondage so that I can render you helpless and have my way with you. It needs to be pretty, elegant.
I don't do smut or porn in my photography, and I don't do smut or porn in real life. I'm no prude, but leaving a few things for the imagination is always more enticing than the explicit.
It's just way too easy to be a pervert in BDSM, and that is something I do not subscribe to.
People have ridiculed me for this, but I stand by it: BDSM is not always about sex. Heck, in my life it hardly ever is. I believe this is why I was so famous as a pro-Dom in my younger days - I offered a service certain people needed without the need to turn it into a sexual fantasy. As I said, it's just bondage and fetish for the sake of it, not the sex of it.
Kinky sex exists, sure, and it's fun and all, but for me there has >>> been something a lot more fundamental than the base instinct of sex about the art of restraint. I guess the word "art" explains that.
In your view, what is the difference between fetish photography as an art form and as porn?
Oh boy, how much time do we have?
Porn is in the eye of the beholder. There is no clear line to what I, or anyone, can say "this is porn" and "this is art". As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, and I'm paraphrasing here: "I don't know what porn is, but I know it when I see it. " (No, I'm not that clever, I just looked it up on wikipedia!)
I have taken nude photos involving bondage gear that is as far removed from sexual connotations as its possible to be. I also have some photos of fully clothed women that can only be described as "sex on a chair". But these are MY opinions. I've realised in my journey through life there really are different strokes for different folks. What one person sees as totally innocuous and bland, others can find offensive or the greatest turn-on. I've learned not to judge, or expect, anything from any said photo. The same photo can be classed as porn by one person and seen as valid art by another. I don't bother with those distinctions, as I have no control over them. I see my own work as art, and if someone else wants to see it as porn, that is their right. Or, as my pal Shirley said a million years ago: "get your dirty mind out of my beautiful work of art".
What kind of models do best in fetish photography?
Ooh, brilliant question - can we take out a billboard ad and post this answer?
Here is the rub: before one can be a fetish model, you first need to be a model. "Fetish" is the adjective here, not the noun.
I meet too many ladies who think because they listen to obscure Goth and/or metal bands and have a "thing" for corsets they can be fetish or alternative models. No honey, just because you are goff and like your fashionably laddered stockings and have a very fashionable non-conformist tattoo or two, does not make you a fetish model - it makes you a goff with bad tattoos and an ill-fitting corset.
The fetish models that I worked with, that probably got me into this magazine today, are first and foremost "normal" models - working models that are as at home doing summer fun in crop-tops and slops and candy stripe bikinis as they are being tied up wearing fetish gear. If I can give one piece of advice for any lady wanting to be a fetish model: learn to be a "vanilla" model first. The rules in front of the camera doesn't change - and just because you like taking your kit off and getting roped up, does not mean you'll be a good model.
There way too many Kat von D wannabes walking around, seeing only the tats and the funky hair, and not seeing what else Kat has underneath the ink. Same goes for Dita von Teese. There's a lot more to Auntie Heather than a fancy 50's hairdo and a liking for Marilyn Manson. It's called "presence", and if you aint got it, not amount of frilly corsets and tattoos are gonna give it to you.
Just like one has to be a photographer before you can be a fetish photographer, so it is with models.
I know its not the answer a lot of the readers want to hear, but here it is, a fetish model is just a normal model with strings attached.
There is a theme than run from your fetish photography through to some of your more 'vanilla' work. Gloves. It blurs the border between fetish and vanilla. Is that on purpose or am I just looking at it that way because I'm a kinkster myself?
Oh no, it's very much on purpose!
My "style" has once been described as "implied fetish", and I think that is probably the greatest compliment I've ever got! As I said above, I was a kink since I could remember, and I cannot change that. Even in my 'nilla work, I have to put my signature on things - I have to, it's what I do!
The glove is that signature. I have a well known glove fetish, except, that is a bit inaccurate. I have a hand-fetish. I love hands, they are so... I'm not gonna ramble on here, anyone with a fetish knows that one really cannot explain or justify it. Its just there. The glove is just a very beautiful cherry on an already enticing cake. Helmut Newton once said "no woman is truly naked unless she is wearing high heels". I'll change that slightly and say "no woman is truly naked unless she's wearing gloves".
But that's for the infamous nude. In the vanilla world, the gloves just adds a little element of something extra, something special. Gloves can be sexy, elegant, and oh so pleasing to the eye without shouting "look at me, I'm a kinkster!".
I also love gloves for the way it makes models act and pose. A lot of models, even experienced ones, sometimes do not know what to do with their hands if they are posing. (Tying them up solves this problem). But give a model a set of gloves and suddenly she turns into a vamp and even the most prudish conservative ladies turn into pin-up queens for some reason. If there's a psychologist out there who would like to do a study on this, let me know...
I have quite the glove collection now, though it always shrinks a bit. I've had more than one model refuse to give my gloves back after a shoot. I protest a bit, but not too much, it's always great finding people who share the same things as you do, and a surprising amount of ladies that I worked with, in fetish or vanilla, love the gloves!
Yes, I admit, I love gloves - it drives my fiancée crazy when she sees my work "You gotta stop with the gloves", she says. Maybe she's right. Nah... she's always right, but in this instance, I'll carry on!
What do you find are the most popular kinds of fetish photos?
Well, this ties in on the question above - I've found many of my photos reposted on blogs, "stolen", favourited, etc, and I've noticed a theme here - the work of mine that gets the most attention, gets the most hits, are my glove pics. Google image search routinely finds my work on glove fetishist sites.
Secondly, my smoking pics. I've never smoked in my life, never even taken a puff out of curiosity, but I'm no militant anti-smoker. I use cigarettes a lot in my photography. A cigarette is an odd thing - a woman smoking can be the ugliest, most off-putting sight a man can see, and it can be the most incredibly alluring thing the eyes can behold. Most models smoke (that stereotype is true), and if a cigarette makes her feel more relaxed, more comfortable, and if it gives her something to do with her (gloved) hands... why not? Google images has found tons of my work on smoking fetish sites. Until a few years ago, I did not even know smoking fetish sites existed until I got a report of a stolen image on one!
These two themes get a lot more hits and views than the more bondage-related ones. I guess maybe because its more accessible to the average person - is a lot easier to be a fetishist with a glove than with a handcuff. I guess despite 50 shades, people are still skittish about the restraint side of things, the subtle stuff is what I get the most demand for.
What parts of the human body do you like to photograph most?
Faces and hands. I discovered that I'm a portrait photographer. In all the thousands of photos I've taken, maybe three are "headless", and about 10 percent are full-length bodies. The rest are all faces with an element of the hand involved.
I love nudes, but I don't do an "unjustified" nude. It took me about 4 years of working with models before I did my first nude. Everyone ahs bad days at the office - and if you have a bad shoot with a clothed girl, you write it off and you go on - you muck up a nude, and you are suddenly a useless untalented pervert who just wanna get girls out of their panties so you can get your rocks off.
When busy with a fetish shoot, what are the most common fears that the models and you as photographer have?
I really cannot speak for the models, but when working with a new model, there is always the fear that we won't "click". This is as true for fetish as it is for 'nilla shoots.
It happens - we don't always get on with everyone we meet. I've worked with a few models that well, we just don't see eye to eye. Again - as true for 'nilla as it is for fetish. This is nobody's fault, it just happens, and sometimes, yeah, things just do not turn out as planned.
luckily, a few times things have clocked incredibly, and I'm the proud owner of four muses. there are four models I shoot with regularly that always push my buttons in the right way, inspire me to do more, better. I thank these ladies, if not for them, I'd be miserable sod a lot more often than I am now.
Your work is mostly studio based. Why is that?
My psychologist will have a field day with this answer: I like the control!
Well, that is part of the answer. As a photographer first, and a fetish photographer second, I love the control the studio gives me over the light. If this was a photography mag and not a kinky one, I'll rant about how important light is, and how photography is all about the light, yadda yadda yadda, but I won't. So I'll just say in a studio, I can take control of the light. I'm not dependent on weather, sunshine, location or whatever, I can use the light the way I want to. I've done too many location shots where the light just isn't right, or the weather doesn't play along, and that spoils the fun. Dealing with the light you've not wanted is part of the difference between a good photographer and a great one, and thanks to some unplanned weather I've gotten some great unplanned shots, but those are the exception, not the rule. I like to know that when I go to the studio, I am in control of the light, and if the shoots don't come out as I planned, I cannot blame anyone but myself.
The second part is I like the intimacy of the studio. I have a golden rule in my studio - if you are not involved with the shoot, you are not in the studio. Mothers, boyfriends, hired muscle... sorry, there is a few very nice restaurants around my studio where you can wait while I do my shoot, but you are not in the studio watching. The privacy the studio gives a better environment to connect with the models/clients, and that gives a better result. Shooting on location does not always bring one that. This shows in the photo. And the energy is brilliant. Three people: a model, a make-up artist, and me. Just the three of us, and we make magic. I always say I don't take photos so I can have photos, the very act of making them is what's important to me. Having pretty pictures to look at afterwards is a bonus.
Props. Tell us about your treasure chest full of props!
Treasure chest, huh? Who have you been speaking to? I assume you are talking about my kinky treasures, not my photographic one...
Well, firstly as alluded to earlier, there is my glove box. I do not know how many pairs of gloves I have, but it's a lot. This box goes with me to every shoot - in fact, it never leaves the boot of my car! I can hardly go through a winter without adding something to my collection. Antique shops sometimes offer up some amazing glovely treasures too.
Then I have two toyboxes, one rope-bag, and one "hard bondage" bag. The rope bag contains heck knows how many meters of different ropes. I have everything from 5mm cotton braid sash-cord to half-inch twisted sisal for that more authentic look. And everything in-between. Then my hard box contain things like my collars, leashes, chains, locks, and of course, handcuffs.
Handcuffs... Yeah. one could probably call me obsessed. I won't argue. Let's see now, two pairs of chained police-issue cuffs, one set hinged police issue, one set sex-shop cheapies (don't ever buy those, folks!), one set separated handcuffs, two sets of ankle shackles, two sets of leather cuffs and my pride and joy, an antique set of Hiatt Darby cuffs, which has been dated to Victorian era England - pre 1820 - and they still work fine! I guess they don't make 'em like they used to. Those cuffs have also gotten me on the cover of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Yes, really. It was just a stock photo I took, but still...
Is there a shoot that you're burning to do but it's too wild and kinky for even us fetish folk to understand? If so, do share!
Wow... uh... I can't think of something that is too wild and kinky, but there are two shoots I want to do that I just did not get the right model and/or time and/or elements together to do.
I've been fortunate enough that I've managed to capture most, if not all, of the things I wanted to do photographically. One shoot I completed recently is maybe a bit bizarre even for kinky folk. I've always had enormous problems with my teeth and jaws, I spent more time in orthodontists' chairs than I did eating warm meals. I spent a total of 11 years in braces, and I still have some orthodontic hardware I have to wear to keep my teeth from falling out. It was quite a painful experience, both physically and emotionally, and the only way I survived all this hardware and pain was to fetishise it. I always said I want to change the stereotype from the guy or girl who wears braces from being the geek and butt end of every joke, to making braces and headgear sexy again. I found the right model, and I think we nailed it. I managed to fetishise orthodontic headgear! A few people told me that I'm just strange and bizarre - they are right of course - but when the photos went out, the response was amazing and a few people said they never thought that braces could be made to look sexy.
However, a few things still elude me.
I always wanted to do a shoot in the Namib desert. I have this images in my mind of a naked woman tied up in the most beautiful shibari walking across the top of a sand dune. I think the sense of isolation and desolation that can give could be awesome. I'll do this one as soon as my application to win the lottery is processed.
And then, I have in my mind a 12-hour shoot. Take one model, naked, fully made up, and put her in handcuffs and chain her to the wall with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a camera on multiple exposure taking a pic every 10 minutes for 12 hours. I think the progression of that series, of change in demeanour over a 12-hour long bondage could be photographically, and psychologically, fascinating. The "before and after" portrait of that shoot should tell a great story. I had a model volunteer for that shoot, but she buggered off to Zurich to go study before we could find a good place to do it in. (funny both these wish-list shoots are out of studio, huh?)
Lastly, is there anything else you want to share with us? Upcoming plans, exhibitions maybe?
uh... I wish! if anyone wants to curate an exhibit of me... Nah, I just do what I does, no big plans. Maybe I should have. Why, do you have any suggestions?
alt.SA 8