THOMAS VAN DE SCHECK
Art-Manufaktur, Kassel, Germany ****
Thomas van de Scheck is clearly a skilled exponent of in-yer-face photography.
His A4 hardback book Cuts offers some 200 pages of vivid, provocative and sometimes quite extreme images that will undoubtedly raise the pulse of any fan of the Torture Garden take on fetishism, BDSM, body art and extreme performance.
Within these pages, feisty goth chicks and self-proclaimed sluts vie for our attention with ’50s glamourpusses, thighbooted doms, pasty-faced vamps, heavy rubber lovers, bondage babes, bleeders, slashers and flashers.
And there is, literally, never a dull moment. Every pose is animated, larger than life, theatrically OTT, and the models — a fit and tasty bunch beneath the fake gore and the heavy make-up — mug mercilessly for van de Scheck’s camera.
However outrageous some of the images may at first appear (especially to those seeing them through vanilla eyes), the common thread running through this cast of colourful characters is an unmistakable sense of joy in the rôles and scenarios they’re creating in the photographer’s studio.
The wild girls and boys captured in Cuts would probably like to be thought of as the shook troops of the European fetish movement, and if so, then at least they’re shocking with style. Even the book’s fake suicide has put on immaculate eyebrows and her best leathers before blowing her brains out against her artist’s easel!
OK, the book’s excesses won’t be to everyone’s taste (even the printing seems to have been done with extra red to make the most of the blood), but there is just so much life in its pages. Happily, pervery of the po-faced pc variety just doesn’t get a look in here. TM (Reviewed Mar 2005)
www.art-manufaktur.com
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