FLEURSDUMAL
Bobette's Photos from Torture Garden 2003-2007
Dirty Pictures (£20)

Britain's premier pervy party promoter Torture Garden has a well-deserved reputation for organising fetish events with a level of vibrancy and colour that other kinky clubs can only dream of.

The event's ability to entice the most exotic-looking creatures of the night to display their plumage and their pervy proclivities gives it an obvious appeal to photographers looking for visually extravagant subject matter. Thus, TG has long proved a rich source of imagery for fetish/alternative magazines and websites like The Fetishistas.

Despite this, however, TG was until recently one of very few fetish clubs to have had even one photography book devoted to it. And now, with the publication of Bobette's FleursduMal, it is surely the only club to become the subject of two such works.

The author is a well known figure on the London scene - not only a photographer but also a seasoned clubber, promoter and web publisher with involvement in Club Subversion, Kinkfest and LondonFetishScene.com. And the book Bobette has created, from an archive of many thousands of images shot mainly at TG's bigger celebrations over the past five years, is a real cornucopia of kinky delights.

The 200-plus pictures that made it into the final selection show what a great eye this snapper has not only for the moment but also for the kind of close-ups that reveal some fascinating character aspect or delicious pervy detail.

Many fetish photographers are (understandably) obsessed with shots that put the outfit at the forefront and treat the wearer as merely the filling. Bobette, however, is clearly as intrigued by personality as by costume, and has packed the pages of FleursduMal with images in which his subjects' whacky expressions, way-out make-up, wondrous facial ornamentations and wild coiffures are as important as the radical and kinky clothing they're wearing.

This approach has produced a real page-turner; so more-ishly rich is the content of each spread that you find yourself with no choice but to plough through from beginning to end, getting fix after fix after fix of the gloriously OTT demi-monde revealed within.

The format of the book is also worth a mention. In choosing a landscape orientation for the pages (and for most of the images), the author counters the common assumption among fetish event photographers that portrait (ie vertical) framing is the natural format for kinky clubbing shots. Landscape close-ups can create a kind of intimacy with the subject that full-length portraits rarely achieve, and I do wish that more club photographers would exploit this.

The fact that Bobette does exploit it so effectively is one of many reasons to buy this great little hardback. TM

FleursduMal is available from Club Subversion at £20, or £19 if you register and buy online, plus £3.95 p&p. It is also available from Dirty Pictures Ltd, Unit 4, 92-98 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5EL (020 7582 4545).

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