Fetish Dayz Reviews

MODERN VIXENS — WORLD OF WINKYTIKI

OCATAVIO C ARIZALA
Goliath, Frankfurt ****

Published alongside Goliath’s Bad Girls Hotel (reviewed above), Modern Vixens mirrors the former’s  350-picture-packed A5 hardback style, except for its use of a more conventional portrait format in place of Bad Girls’ landscape layout.

Of the two releases, Modern Vixens may have more instant fetish appeal owing to the amount of familiar faces you’ll encounter within its covers. Household names such as Masuimi Max, Dita von Teese, Julie Strain, Emily Marilyn, Darenzia, Ivy Red and Angela Ryan help make this offering quite the fetish model fest.

However, the kitsch 1950s pin-up postcard style, though distinctive, will not be to everyone’s taste as it does tend to err on the side of cutesy, avoiding the darker side of kink explored by its stablemate. TM (Reviewed Mar 06)
www.goliathbooks.com

MUSE — THE ART OF RAY LEANING

RAY LEANING
The Erotic Print Society, London ***

There can be few people on the British fetish scene who haven’t encountered the work of Ray Leaning. Whether in the form of the giant oil-on-canvas paintings that accompany his regular appearances at London’s Erotica fairs, or the numerous more modestly sized images that circulate around the scene in one form another, Leaning’s art has become, over the past few years, pretty much of a fetish institution.

For whatever reasons, though, one tends to see the same Leaning creations again and again. So for me, one of the major revelations of this nicely printed 128-page tome from EPS was that this 45-year-old artist has been far more prolific than I had realised. Behind the clutch of familiar, lifelike paintings — mainly of his wife and muse Carol in fetish garb — lies a plethora of anatomically accomplished life drawings not just of Carol but also of other models, many of them familiar and most with a fetish connection of some sort.

Delving into the artist’s self-penned text to extract some pertinent biographical information, I found myself quite taken by the self-effacing account of his creative voyage from Allen Jones-inspired art student to creator, today, not only of confidently gigantic paintings but also of one of the most stylish and sexy exhibition catalogues you’ll find anywhere (the Erotica catalogue, another collaboration with wife Carol).

Ray notes that his ‘illustration style’ was frowned upon from quite early on by those around him who considered themselves proper artists. And it is true that these days, photo-realistic painting and drawing of this kind generally find more fans within the fetish scene than in the wider art world.
But with Leaning, you have the satisfaction of knowing that he works mainly from life, rather than copying from magazine photographs like so many of his genre contemporaries. That’s just one of many qualities separating him from fetish art’s lesser talents. TM (Reviewed Mar 2005)
www.eroticprints.org

MY LOVE: DIARY OF A LOVING S/M RELATIONSHIP

ANNA ROSE
Alterpic, Holland ****

Any book that calls itself ‘the diary of a loving S/M relationship’ is just asking to be pigeonholed with all the other personal SM publishing projects that one really wishes people had kept to themselves. What is it, after all, that makes SM couples think that anybody else is interested in what they get up to in the bedroom – or the dungeon?

The answer, perhaps, is that pervs who find a loving, stable relationship that allows them safely to live out their wildest SM fantasies sometimes feel so goddam lucky, they really need to tell the rest of us about it. Plus, of course, the very nature of some people’s SM sexuality demands such exhibitionism: public exposure of their enslavement is what makes it real and undeniable.

Unfortunately, those motivated to expose their SM relationships to public scrutiny are often more blessed with good intentions than talent or photogenicity. So it is a pleasure to be able to report that despite the odds being stacked against it, Anna Rose’s book is not some piece of hopelessly amateur vanity publishing that a real friend would have advised against. In fact, the quality of the photography and the way it has been reproduced in this nicely printed hardback allow My Love to be considered alongside any professionally published collection of fetish/BDSM imagery.

Whether by design or accident, this is very much a photography book with  accompanying text, and not, as the title may lead you to think, a text-heavy ode to the joys of 24/7 SM by some love-struck scribe. What words there are are mainly in the form of short pieces of verse. Now SM verse, as a genre, is fairly cringeworthy, and if Anna’s texts were published on their own, they might not escape such criticism. But here, they’re more like footnotes to the real visual story. They provide that extra personal dimension that makes it all genuine; they confirm that in these pictures is a real woman sharing her deepest feelings. This is not a model posing, but a person experiencing and having her experiences documented by the camera of her husband, Master U.

The images — of Anna in rubber (top), leather, bondage (above) and various kinds of home-grown SM situations — are not the soft-focus monochrome studies sometimes used to legitimise a concept like this as ‘art’. These photos are crisp, colourful, explicit — the sort you find on better websites. As a result, My Love is horny, yet also quite touching. And that’s some achievement. TM (Reviewed Dec 2004)
www.alterpic.com

OBSESSION

MARTIN RAFAEL CLASS
Mixofpix, Frankfurt *****

Martin Rafael Class is a photographer associated with Chicago’s fetish and BDSM scenes, and this volume from Goliath’s pocket-sized Mixofpix imprint was my first, welcome exposure to his distinctive black and white style. Eschewing modern digital photography for his trusted medium format Mamiya film camera, Class achieves a near-perfect modern take on the seminal fetish/bondage imagery of the 1950s, filling a significant gap in the  genre.

We all feel nostalgic for stuff of the kind that first pushed all the right buttons for us. But if that stuff happens to be the B&W bondage archives of Irving Klaw, John Willie and co, there is a surprising paucity of newer work that succeeds in evoking that early combination of innocence, kitchness and dark sexual promise without looking too corny or too amateurish for modern tastes. But Class has created an almost timeless reinterpretation of the classic genre. His models are obviously modern women with modern bodies, faces, hair-styles and clothing, yet when he puts them in traditional pin-up poses and/or rope bondage, he reconnects the modern to the classic with deceptive ease.

Why does he succeed where others fail? Because he is a much better photographer. It’s easy to forget that most of the people who created the vintage material we cherish so much now were essentially amateurs. Klaw ran a mail order business and became a bondage producer to meet a commercial demand; Willie was an artist who photographed his subjects primarily as reference for his artwork. Neither had Class’s technical skills with a camera, his grasp of light and shade or his abilities as a printer.

In bringing these superior talents to the mix, Class has refreshed the classic B&W genre, giving it a more noirish edge and making it into much better art. Whether shooting straight pin-ups like the book’s cover, or darker images of bondage like this one (right), he achieves the ‘wow’ factor that other faux-vintage work lacks.

So if your buttons were once pushed by vintage B&W images and you thought they never would be again, be prepared for Obsession to give you a nice little treat. TM (Reviewed Jun 05)
www.mixofpix.com

ONANISME MANU MILITARI II

LUKAS ZPIRA
Hors Editions, Saint-Raphael, France *****

From a new publishing company in France focusing on ‘cultural chaos and body mutations’ comes Lukas Zpira’s beautifully produced manifesto for body modification, or, to use its cooler monicker, ‘body hacking’.

Body Art founder Zpira is now, thanks to his numerous foreign tours and his many performances at fetish clubs and other events, one of the world’s best known practitioners of the craft. And this book offers not only his own carefully considered ideas about body mod, but a selection of essays by other respected authorities on the subject from France and elsewhere.

It’s no surprise that Lukas rejects establishment views of body hacking. He claims: “Far from being a narcissistic quest, a teenage revolt against the family or any other kind of pathetic or burlesque experiment of self-mutilation… the assertion of the reappropriation of the body by a few contemporary artists experimenting with the wide range of possible mutations goes far beyond: it is a major political statement.”

Other contributors lending intellectual weight and credibility to this tome include graphic artist Laurent Courau, sociology lecturer Philippe Liotard, subculture specialist Maxence Grugier, sociology professor David Le Breton and Japanese body mod pundit Ryoichi Maeda.

But despite the collective force of their words, it is really in its imagery that Onanisme’s primary power lies. Because body modification beyond the obligatory teenage navel piercing is still seen as being on the fringes of the fringe, documenting it tends to be the preserve of small publishers notable more for their enthusiasm than their photography, design skills or print budgets. Onanisme is a welcome exception: a repository of vivid state-of-the-art graphics, photography and Photoshoppery that does full justice to a fascinating subject.

You’ll have to have it if you’re a hacking fan, but many people will want to own it simply because it’s such a beautiful artefact and an undeniable landmark in alternative publishing. TM (Reviewed Sep 05)
www.hors-editions.com

PRIVATE ROOMS

GUIDO ARGENTINI
teNeues, Dusseldorf *****

I wonder how far the average fan of classy erotic photography would have to delve into this big and beautiful volume before arriving at the conclusion that Private Rooms is probably the best book Helmut Newton never published. Two, three, four, five pages? Certainly no more, because the photography just oozes Newton’s influence from every pose and every pixel. And I intend that only as a compliment to this Italian artist. 

From his use of sumptuous interior locations — the ancient villas, modern apartments and elegant hotel rooms that give the book its title — to the mannered way his models are dressed and posed, Argentini seems to be revisiting with loving faithfulness the decadent, dangerous glamour Newton first explored in books such as White Women and Sleepless Nights. Immaculate, impossibly gorgeous women are draped on beds and chairs, crawl on the floor, are propped up with doll-like rigidity, engage in sapphic play, or appear with pervy props such as boots, whips and handcuffs. To turn the pages is to turn from one absolutely stunning image to another.

While anyone who recalls Argentini’s ponygirls cover for Skin Two magazine will realise that this man is no stranger to the more extreme accoutrements of kink, the overall tone of the work in Private Rooms is best described as fetish lite. Not much rubber, leather or bondage but lots of lingerie, stockings, and corsetry; in fact very much the mix found in Newton’s classic books. Nevertheless I would challenge any modern admirer of the fetishised female form not to be stimulated by the imagery within these extravagant pages.

Many fetish photographers cite Helmut Newton as an inspiration, but few approach his quality of work. Conversely, Guido Argentini keeps any influence Newton may have had on him to himself, and yet seems able to produce work of a similar standard effortlessly. Well, I say effortlessly. Private Rooms is the product of some ten years of endeavour. But considering the result is an absolute classic — worth every minute, I’d say. TM (Reviewed Mar 06)
www.teneues.com

SEX IS BLUE

CHEYCO LEIDMANN
TeNeues, Dusseldorf *****

Cheyco Leidmann is one of those photographers who will probably be forever associated, by virtue of his book Foxy Lady, with the American West Coast rock culture of the late 1970s and early ’80s.

In that age of the airhead and the airbrush, Leidmann’s photography was an extravaganza of heavily saturated colour — a vibrant, surreal mix of neon-lit and sun-drenched superglamour that blended nicely with the eye-catching/amusing/sexy artefacts lining the shelves of the era’s trendy new gift shops. But on closer inspection it revealed a preoccupation with women in shiny skintight clothing and other accoutrements that marked Leidmann out as no ordinary erotic snapper.

For whatever reason, he did not become one of the household names of the modern fetish scene — a scene that began life at the same time as Foxy Lady was published. But his new publishers TeNeues clearly recognise perv potential in his seventh book Sex Is Blue — and so they should!

The work here is immediately recognisable as Leidmann – even if you haven’t seen much else that he’s done for 20 years. In that time his vision has become darker and much more twisted. In collaboration with Ypsitylla von Nazareth, credited here with production and styling, Cheyco revisits some of the landscapes of his past, but sees them now through far more alien eyes.

Kinky girls may still be an essential element of the mix, but they’re no longer offered as fetish glamour fodder. In place of the überchicks of old is a collection of human Barbie-dolls distorted and mutilated by digital trickery and placed in nightmare montages of fluorescent pink sex and violence. His subjects are penetrated, pierced, chained, gasmasked, talon-sporting, fish-fucking, gun-sucking, zip-titted, nipple-clamped, barbed-wired-bound actors trapped in an hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic hell. And worse, quite a few of them are still evidently wearing plastic fetish garb.

If you just want foxy chicks in rubber, Sex Is Blue is not the answer. But if you’re willing once in a while to have your senses assaulted by alien sex fiends, have I got a book for you. TM (Reviewed Sep 05)
www.teneues.com

SEX TOYS

LISA SUSSMAN
Carlton Books, London ***

There was a time not so long ago when books about sex toys were discrete little black and white paperbacks with line drawings, produced by worthy wimmin’s underground groups in San Francisco.

Then, wow, women suddenly got really interested in sex and, with it, the potential for having fun with all manner of erotic accessories. And so now, a book about sex toys can have a bright pink, gaudily graphic cover that shouts at you from the other side of the street, with, inside, lots of explicit product pix illustrating lots of cheerfully frank advice from a groovy chick who has obviously been there and done that.

This is, of course, a book aimed at the general mix of erotically awakened, curious and/or experimental females. But let’s face it, pervs have been playing with toys for yonks, and we haven’t become uninterested just because the rest of the world is catching up. So be assured that, despite its generalist slant, there’s plenty here that’ll be of interest to kinky girls and their partners – and all in easily digestible form. TM (Reviewed Mar 2005)
www.carltonbooks.co.uk