Posts in the Irving Klaw category

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.

A Few Klaw Photos

Irving Klaw | Photography
July 2, 2011

There’s no time at the present to really discuss Irving Klaw’s output, so I’ll just present a few photos with minimal commentary. Note that all the photos (unless indicated otherwise) are ones I own or have owned. The past year I’ve sold a number of Klaw prints, including some of these.

Klaw is known best for his Bettie Page bondage photos but his output was much more varied. This is an example from his FI series (Female Impersonator) started around 1950. This photo is from the mid-1950s. The guys in these photos always look like they’re having a great time.

Klaw also sold a large number of pinup photographs, including photographs of burlesque strippers doing their routines. Each Klaw photo had an individual identifying number. Other producers at the same time (such as Burmel) produced sets with all the photos in the same set having the same number.

Klaw had his own photographers producing work, purchased photographs from amateur bondage artists and also bought rights to reproduce pinup photos. The X and Y series of photos (almost 1,000 photos in each series) are made up of these photos, shot by various people in the 1940s. Pinup prints sold for 15 cents each, bondage photos sold for 40 cents each in the early 1950s.

Comparing these photos with the Guyette photos from the earlier post, you’ll notice that Klaw’s photos hardly ever show cropping of the image like as seen in the Guyette photos. The Guyette photos generally are better, though the prints are on cheaper paper and are heavily toned. To me, Guyette photos often show a more modern sensibility.

Heavy cropping of images was also seen in the 1930s French Diana Slip photos of lingerie, where only the torso is shown generally. Brassai worked for Slip.