The beauty of fetishes

Some fetishes are amusing. The other day I wrote about my discovery that there is such a thing as a sock fetish. One result for the search term “fetish” on Google reads “Woman with objects fetish marries Eiffel Tower”. When used in a sexual context, the term fetish has dark, deviant and morally suspect undertones.

Originally a term for religious objects, fetish is used in everyday language as either an obsession with something (as in she has a shoe fetish) or a sexual interest (he has a high heels fetish). As you can see, the term comes with built-in gender stereotyping. In fashion, fetish has of course long entered the mainstream.

Its paraphernalia render fetish interesting to the artist: Tactile materials, such as rubber, lace and rope; assorted objects, such as shoes, whips and cuffs; and bodies intriguingly contorted, stretched or immobilised.

The photographs in this collection were created between 2001 and 2011. They can all be termed, in a wide sense, as fetish although very few photographs were made with this idea in mind. The images are sexual but implicit rather than explicit and emphasize the play element. The photographs portray situations and pose questions but they do not offer any answers. The interpretations and implications exist only in the viewer’s mind, which must make us question whether what we see is real.

Most of the photographs are, with a little imagination, easily identified with a particular fetish, others are a little more obscure and one or two I am sure are fetish but I cannot think which fetish exactly.

The photographs are not suitable for underage viewers.

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