Dream Visions – Surrey’s Dungeon and Photography Studio

Dream Visions is a photo studio with a difference. You can hire it as a well equipped studio for all kinds of fetish photography – using the dungeon setting if you wish.

You can be the photographer and bring your own model, or you might like to shoot with Latex Model, the specialist in rubber.

Or the owner of the studio, award-winning pro photographer Angelica, can take the photos for you.

Just want to play in a dungeon? No problem – you can simply hire the space to have fun and try out the floggers, paddles canes, vaulting horse, cage and stocks to your heart’s content.

Dream Visions is located near Gatwick and it’s easy to reach from Surrey and South London. Especially convenient – it’s fast and easy by train from London Victoria.

Check out the options on the website here www.dream-visions.co.uk

American Ecstasy – Barbara Nitke on the Golden Age of Porn

NEW YORK (February, 2012) – Launched with no fanfare, Barbara Nitke’s crowdsourcing campaign on Kickstarter raised over $9,000 in the first few days. Firm in her belief that there is a large audience for the book, she intends to self publish American Ecstasy, and take it directly to the public. The book is a memoir in pictures and words of the twelve years she spent working as a stills photographer on porn movie sets in New York in the 1980s.

“It’s hard to imagine now,” Nitke says, “but back in the 1980s people lined up outside of real movie theatres to watch feature length sex flicks. It was the Golden Age of Porn. There was a thriving X-rated movie industry in New York City, and that was where I got my start as a photographer.”

Her American Ecstasy book is a nostalgic view of those heady days. The photographs, while undeniably sexual, reach far beyond the usual sex machine image of the industry to reveal the touching humanness of the actors. Often shot between takes, when the actor’s porn star masks were down, the images are deeply intimate. Disheveled, semi-naked starlets huddle together between takes, staring out into the distance with combat soldier stares. A paunchy director, wearing a baseball cap, comes into the frame to give Nina Hartley a few notes on her performance. The actor underneath her keeps right on going.

The book also includes stories Nitke wrote of the day-to-day life on the sets, and clips from extensive interviews she conducted with the porn stars of the day. In an essay for the book, art critic Arthur C. Danto writes, “From reading these verbal ‘shots’ of life in the porn world, one realises that the scenario is as rigid as those of commedia dell’arte. Instead of Columbine and Pierrot, one has the needful housewife and the pizza boy, delivering initially the pie, and then himself…”  He also compares her photography with that of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Nitke is seeking $25,000 to self publish the book, and is offering rewards for those who contribute, which range from classic postcards to prints of the photos, and of course copies of the book itself.

Campaign and project video -
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1990714042/american-ecstasy-photo-book

Barbara Nitke, http://www.barbaranitke.com, is a New York art and commercial photographer best known for her compassionate view of alternative sex. Her career has taken her from behind-the-scenes of hardcore porn sets in the 1980s, to fetish in the 1990s, and into the private lives of sadomasochists for the following decade. She also does photography for mainstream television shows and the fashion industry. Her work has been shown and collected worldwide.

Contact Barbara Nitke
917-670-4304
Barbara@BarbaraNitke.com

Latex Model – for Latex Photography

Latex Model is a professional model with a passion for rubber. She has a vast collection of rubber from designers including Bondinage, Inner Sanctum, Breathless, Skin Two, House of Harlot and Honour.

Not just dresses – the collection includes full enclosure, hoods and catsuits. You can also bring your own outfits for her to wear – she’s dress size 10 and shoe size 6.

Based near Gatwick airport, Latex Model often works at the nearby Dream Visions studio (which has a dungeon setting) or she can travel.

Full details at www.latexmodel.co.uk

House of Tolerance – Film Review

House of Tolerance is a film about a Parisian brothel, L’Apollonide, at the dawn of the 20th century. The film stays within the walls, creating a sense of rich-coloured claustrophobia for the girls and the audience. This is made particular use of in their one day out, when the colours become vibrant citrus and you share their sense of release as they frolic and take the piss out of their clients.

The big surprise of this film is that, although having all the elements to make an erotic film, it isn’t. Breasts, corsets, beautiful women, a pet panther, champagne baths and sex don’t add up to eroticism, although they do add up to a sensuality of colours and textures, which some reviewers have compared to paintings by Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec.

The film is ultimately about the deep bond between the girls that live and work together, sharing each other’s hopes and fears. The ‘emotional skeleton’ of the film, as Director Bertrand Bonello calls it, is the girl who encounters a sadistic client who leaves her with a mouth like the Joker in Batman.  Bonello admits that he was haunted by this image from the 1928 film ‘The Man Who Laughs’ directed by Paul Leni, originally a novel by Victor Hugo. This moment in the story recurs thanks to the music-like rhythm of the storytelling.

The film has been quite rightly praised for its soundtrack, perhaps because the obvious instrument would have been the accordion, but instead you are blasted with the gritty-gorgeous ‘Bad Girl’ by Lee Moses and ‘The Right To Love You’ by The Mighty Hannibal.

House of Tolerance was shot in a castle in the suburbs of Paris, in which the cast lived and filmed. Bonello said that he wanted to recreate his childhood in Nice, ‘I was a kid with many intellectuals, painters, writers sleeping on the couch. Maybe that fed me a lot, I am like Proust and his madeleine’, he jokes, ‘running after that again and again.’ And as for the surrealist image of the sperm tears? ‘Should I say the truth or not?’ Bonello asks. He decides to go for it. ‘I received a text from someone who had that dream. I have no imagination, but I like that it’s a dreamy image, something very realistic and the same time because you feel like the girls are being filled up all day and you can cry it out at night.’

Philip French writing for The Observer commended on the non-fiction aspects of the film. He wrote ‘there is enough detail about money, cosmetics, hygiene, sexually transmitted diseases, theatrical deportment and authentic camaraderie to qualify the film as a kind of documentary.’ The official non-fiction elements of the story include the two letters, the first from the madame begging help when the rent is put up, the second to a man who is supporting his favourite girl, but no longer wishing to see her, since she has syphilis and he doesn’t want to infect his family.

Each prostitute, as well as the house itself, which the director said was also cast as a character, has her own fate. Particularly interesting is the opium addict who starts the film saying ‘I could sleep for a hundred years I’m so tired’ and ends the film still a prostitute, but a hundred years later in contemporary Paris. Some critics have argued that this is a statement about the eternal, unchanging nature of prostitution, but Bonello says that for him, who was looking at the girl in the shot, rather than at the background, it was more an attempt to say ‘this girl’s destiny is to be a prostitute forever.’

By Tessa Ditner

House of Tolerance
Production year: 2011
Country: France
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 122 mins
Director: Bertrand Bonello
France – Color – 125 mins -1:1.85 – Dolby SRD
Cast: Hafsia Herzi, Céline Sallette, Alice Barnole, Adèle Haenel, Jasmine Trinca, Iliana Zabeth, et Noémie Lvovsky. Judith Lou Levy, Anaïs Thomas, Pauline Jacquard, Maïa Sandoz, Joanna Grudzinska, Esther Garrel. Xavier Beauvois, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Jacques Nolot, Laurent Lacotte. Production: Les Films du Lendemain
Distribution: Haut et Court

For more info and video, see… http://en.lapollonide-music.blogs.dissidenz.com/

Two Very Special Dungeon Pieces – for Sale at Bargain Prices

The Rackmasters make superb, top quality dungeon furniture, as good as you will find anywhere. We chose them to equip the dungeon at the 2011 Skin Two Rubber Ball held on the vintage yacht, HMS President and we were highly impressed with the workmanship and design

The Rack Masters have two really special pieces only, for sale at bargain prices, due to a cancelled order. If you want something really impressive, that will make your dungeon stand out from the rest, here’s your chance…

Spanking Bench: £350
This hand crafted spanking bench is made predominantly from tulipwood and features a meticulously pinned lining and a powder coated steel foot

Vaulting Horse: £400
With high grade covering over 50 mm of padding, this will appeal to those seeking domination for longer periods

The jacking mechanism allows the entire top section to be raised and the torso to be stretched. It comes complete with a detachable base unit. This in conjunction with the jacking mechanism provides significant flexibility over how high the top surface can be raised. This means it’s adjustable to suit taller or shorter subs – a useful feature we have rarely seen

Sold together at discounted price of £650

Buyer will need to collect from Cambridgeshire area

Contact Rackmasters at tywr@hotmail.co.uk

Swish – West London’s Friendly Fetish Night

There’s a great venue to the West of London, just off the A 316, the M3 and M25, easily reached from London, Middlesex and Surrey. It’s called the Hellfire Club and it’s home to various alt sex events, from swinger nights to BMFC parties, etc. Read more

Fetish Map London 2012/2013 – Out Now

The famous Fetish Map of London, now in its tenth year, is a really original product – we wish we had thought of it first Read more

Frocks: New Parties for Trannies at a Super Venue

Frocks is a super series of fun parties for t-girls, organised by Michelle Rust of Honest – a leading specialist in everything for the TV. Honest provide make-up, hair styling, beauty treatments, coffee mornings, photography, get-togethers and more – it’s a mecca for TVs. And these are their best parties yet…

The events are held at The Vanilla Alternative, a really splendid venue on the A1 in Sandy, Bedfordshire. The place is roomy and attractive, with every facility – even a big hot tub! If you are thinking of a sleazy swinger club, well, it’s nothing like that – the staff are lovely, the premises are spotless and it’s easy to reach from around the UK. There are several hotels nearby – check the venue’s website for all the details.

Frocks parties are for and or course, for their admirers! There are changing facilities on site, you can have a complete makeover, a beauty treatment and party your fishnets off!

Here is the Frocks 2012 diary of bi monthly parties on the third Thursday…

February 16th: Valentines Blush
April 19th: Easter Parade
June 21st: Sumer Ball
August 16th: Prom Queens
October 18th: Anniversary Kiss
December 20th: Christmas Bling

Honest is at www.honest-advice.co.uk
The Vanilla Alternative is at www.thevanillaalternative.co.uk

Club RUB Christmas Party – and 2012 Diary

Here are some photos of Club RUB’s Red and White Christmas Party on December 17th. In case you didn’t know, RUB is London’s friendly fetish club, always fun, never hardcore, on the third Saturday of every month. There’s a dungeon, a dance space, loads of seating and DJs Irish Pete and Rob Parish. Don’t worry if you missed the Christmas party – here’s their schedule for 2012…

Photo Gallery by Gorden Rondelle

* January 21st – Animal Menagerie and Beautiful Beasts
* February 18th – Steampunk, Tarts in Tartan and Kinky in Kilts
* March 17th – Gay Icons – from the Village People to showgirls
* April 21st – Circus Extraordinaire and Freakshow – 15th Birthday
* May 19th – Aliens Abduction Aboard the Starship Enterprise
* June 16th – Clowns, Puppets, Dolls, Harajuku and Manga Cuties

Visit the website and sign up for Kim RUB’s monthly newsletter… www.club-rub.com

Spanksticks – Gleaming Black Rubber Canes!

Spanksticks are a super new product, ideal for anyone who enjoys a bit of corporal punishment – and fancies combining it with rubber… 
Read more

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