Tag: Vintage

Jutka and Jamie

I always enjoy posting and gently poking fun at the fashions and tropes of vintage fetish shots. However, I should make clear that I’ve the utmost respect for the people who created them. They were operating at great legal risk, with very limited funds and no easy way to distribute their material. They had no blueprint for what BDSM material should look like and no easy way to get customer feedback. Sex workers today complain – with total justification – about the limits credit card companies and social media impose. Yet the idea of being able to simply snap and tweet an image would blow the mind of a 60’s fetish photographer. They had to deal with printing physical magazines, postal inspectors keen to sieze their material, paper mailing lists of nervous customers and the mob money that funded a lot of pornography.

If, like me, you love reading stories about the early days of kinky porn, then I’d highly recommend this Rialto article on Leonard Burtman and his wife/model Jutka Goz (aka Jennifer Jordan).  Using a photograph of Jutka dominating Jamie Gillis as jumping off point, it tells the story of Leonard Burtman, one of the pioneers of kink and femdom porn. Along the way it touches on such famous names as Weegee, Bettie Page, Irving Klaw, Rene Bond and of course Jamie Gillis. I found it fascinating and touching. I particularly loved the 2018 interview with Jutka, who seems like she’s living her best life in Beverly Hills.

These two images are of Jutka and Jamie Gillis, both taken from the Rialto article. For anyone wondering if she was really dominant, I’m afraid the answer is no.

Jutka remembers the modeling work as entertaining and enjoyable: “It was fun to get dressed up and be outrageous,” she says. As for whether she had a personal interest in spanking, leather, or domination, she laughs: “It was only a role. I’m a good bullshit artist.”

My thanks to DrewP for point me to the article via a comment.

Vintage Pegging

I’m continuing my theme of vintage femdom imagery with another unusual image. This time it’s not the outfits or setting which are odd – they look pretty standard for 70’s kinky porn – but the activity. Whips, leather outfits and bad bondage are common in vintage shots, but you almost never find pegging scenes like this one. Until the last decade or so it was very risky in the US to combine sex with BDSM in pornography and anal penetration fell under that categorization. I’d therefore guess that this is from a European publication. Of course they wouldn’t have called it pegging at the time – that term wasn’t coined until Dan Savage came along in 2001.

Updated: Bacchus of ErosBlog added an amazing comment with some detailed research on this image. It looks like it came from Candy Films, a forerunner of Color Climax Corporation. Almost certainly it was published in the early 70’s, and probably in a magazine called Man Servant.

Equally Strange

Odd and unsuitable outfits for dommes are nothing new in femdom porn. Her leather outfit and big gloves aren’t what most people would pick for a sunny afternoon on a patio, but I’ve seen stranger. What’s unusual here is his metallic looking corset. That looks very uncomfortable and not in a sexy way. It’s a very weird combination of outfits and setting. At least she gave him a shaggy rug to kneel on.

I’ve no idea where this is from. From the style I’d guess it was shot in the early 70’s.

Size Con

The Daily Dot has put up a thoughtful article on the subject of shame and kink. It’s anchored around the authors virtual attendance at SizeCon – a convention for fans of microphilia and macrophilia. I had no idea such a convention existed, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Where there is porn of something, then there will be forums and fansites, and that means meet-ups and conventions can’t be far behind.

One of my takeaways from the article is that being kinky doesn’t always translate into being open minded or tolerant. As the author writes…

Most of the sex clubs, 18+ panels, and sex ed courses I’ve attended make plenty of room for D/s, S/M, and bondage but don’t really care for anything more fantastical. Or if it comes up, it quickly becomes a joke.

Just because people are operating outside mainstream ideas of sexuality, doesn’t mean they’re not going to set up their own alternative hierarchies and gatekeepers. Much like with free speech, it’s easy to be supportive when something fits with your proclivities. The challenge is to be inclusive and supportive when it doesn’t align. I always try to remind myself that me not liking something – whether it’s a particular kink or a food or a movie – is my loss. It’s not a problem with the thing itself.

I don’t have a kink for size, but I do like this image. The tweet I sourced it from credited it to ‘Gibson’ from 1920.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful email I believe the Gibson in question is Charles Dana Gibson, an American illustrator who created the Gibson Girl.

Oh Sir!

A final post on school bullies. This one continues the theme from yesterday of nervous teachers with very forward students.I particularly like his expression and the position of his hands. He looks like he’s trying to become one with the wall. In contrast she’s pushing forward, pulling backwards and floating in the air.

I’d guess this in an illustration from a 1950’s or 60’s pulp novel about college professors and their insatiable students. Sadly I’ve not managed to track down who the original artist was.

Update: This is the front cover of the Amy Harris novel Prize Pupil, publish in 1966. Based on this page, the artist is unknown.

Update 2: A reader suggested that the artist in question is Robert McGinnis. That’s very possible as it’s definitely in his style, but I don’t have a link for the attribution.

Paul Kamm

I’m continuing the fine art theme with this post. In fact, I’m even continuing the theme of German artists working between the World Wars. This is by Berlin artist Paul Kamm, who published work in the 1920’s and 30’s. Sadly there’s not a lot of information available online about his background or work. Goddess Ezada Sinn has a post on him along with some of his drawings here.

Offered Prayer

This is by the German artist Rudolf Schlichter. Born in 1890, he survived the the first and second World Wars, despite his work being labelled as degenerate by the Nazis. I’ve featured his work before, and I assume the model in both paintings is the same. According to this article it’s an Elfriede Elisabeth Koehler aka Speedy, who shared his interests in “buttoned boots, bondage and masochistic games.” Clearly the disdainful sneer, beloved of many twitter findommes, is not a new invention.

Wighead

This drawing is by the artist Wighead for a 1930’s novel entitled ‘A Genoux Esclave’. You can see more from the book here and there’s an article on the potential identity of the artist here. I discovered the art and its background via this tweet.

These days the idea of a French maid in a sexy black and white outfit with stockings and a little cap exists almost entirely in fetish scenes and silly Halloween outfits. It has become purely a sexual trope. Yet black and white maid outfits in the 19th and early 20th century were a real thing. They were just far more practical. Here’s a picture of one I found from the same era. So what we’re looking at here is a fetishistic interpretation of what was a contemporary uniform of the time. I find it interesting to look at the artwork from that angle. It has a different feel when you consider it from the perspective of a 1930’s kinkster.

Hanging on the Telephone

Here’s a final post in my short series on making connections with pro-dommes in the pre-internet era. This is a photograph of what I’m sure was the expectation/hope in every submissive’s mind when he plucked a card from a phonebox and got up the nerve to dial (quite literally) the number. A fabulous domme clad in full fetish gear, whip in hand, just waiting for his call. That’s very different to today of course, where the submissive assumes the domme will be checking her email, while clad in full fetish gear, whip in hand, just waiting for his message.

I’m afraid I don’t have any background on the image. I found it via this tweet by mrunderheel. I’d guess it’s from the late 70’s or early 80’s.

Vintage Breathplay

It’s rare to see this activity in a vintage shot. Corporal punishment and bondage is fairly common in older shots, and medical play not unheard of, but I can’t recall seeing breathplay before.

It makes me smile, as it’s an activity I love. I particularly like the eye contact they are making, as that’s a key part of any breathplay scene for me. People talk about power exchange as an abstract D/s concept, but breathplay creates a focus that crystallizes that exchange. The power over someone’s breath is literally life and death. If I’m giving that up then I want that other person to be very much in that moment with me.

I found this image via this tweet.