Betty Page, Bondage Princess

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Irving Klaw embarked selling pin-up pictures in the 1950s, many of which featured the notorious Bettie Page. When he embarked to receive demands from his clients for photos of nymphs in what would today be considered S & M and restrain bondage situations, he complied. Making 16mm films out of his own home featuring Bettie and other softcore nymphs of the era, Klaw created an oeuvre which today's fetish material resumes to reference. Much of this work was burned when Klaw was accused of purveying pornography, and the films collected here are rarities not formerly available. Surreal and strangely innocent, the films and pictures are evidently staged in someone's basement, while the fetishwear--not widely attainable in those days--was mostly homemade, lending the work an immediacy and delicate proximity not to be found in similar, more contemporary, films.