Month: December 2011

1975

Badrabbit
December 30, 2011

In 1975 Kelsey was divorced, again a single mom. She’d decided she loved me, was about to begin a disastrous relationship with a man who beat and terrorized her. We’d last seen each other in 1971, wouldn’t meet again until 1977.

In 1975 I was living and working in London in a large eighteenth century house on the Thames. The music room had 18 foot ceilings. As one of the job perks I had reader’s tickets for the London School of Economics library and for the main and manuscript reading rooms for the British Library. The latter ticket is the source for this 1976 photo of me.

I was extremely hung over when it was taken. The night before there’d been a party where the English artist, after a year-long residence in Moscow where she got to know members of the underground art community, taught us to drink vodka like a Russian. Poor sad me, I spent part of the evening afterwards wading in the Thames bawling my eyes out.

Kelsey and the Beautiful Woman in appearance very much fit the same type. The difference is that the Beautiful Woman knew she was pretty. Kelsey thinks she’s average looking, maybe rather plain. She’s a chameleon, constantly changing. Not having a fixed sort of prettiness only enhances the fascination.

John Willie’s 1930s Photographs

Irving Klaw | John Willie | Photography
December 4, 2011

In the 1930s John Willie was living in Australia with his second wife, Holly. He began, heavily influenced by the local fetish culture and London Life magazine, to create art and photographs using fetish themes focused around dress (usually, but not always solely high heeled shoes/boots) or bondage.

I have 300+ Willie photos and of those only 5% are these early 1930s images. The ones I have are 1940s/50s reprints by Irving Klaw. Some 1930s photos were used as illustrations in Willie’s Bizarre magazine published in the US after he moved here in 1946.

Here’s a damaged photo of Holly trying out a pair of boots.

Here are three bondage photos. The first two show the highly formal style that is found in his art and photographs created in this period. The third photo shows an early example of the theme of immobility that was so important in his later work. Holly is the dark-haired model in the first two photos.