Tag: Photograph

Rialto Report

Writing my previous post on HOM reminded me of the site The Rialto Report. If you’re interested in the golden era of adult movies and magazines it’s a fascinating resource. It has a lot of really detailed and well researched articles on many performers and producers from the 70’s and 80’s.

Sadly, the vast majority of it is regular porn, with not a lot of kink or fetish. However, there are a few exceptions. I featured it in this post which links to an article on an early femdom producer and this one on a classic fetish fashion designer. There’s also articles and interviews with well known stars whose careers took them across a wide variety of genres and kinks. For example, Porsche Lynn was a famous adult movie star before opening the dungeon she continues to run today. She’s interviewed across a two part podcast here and here. There’s also an interview with the fabulous Nina Hartley, who has not only created a huge amount of adult content but is also a free speech and industry spokesperson.

This is Nina in a shoot for the Whipped Ass site.

HOM

The Chicago Reader has a short but interesting article on HOM (aka House of Milan) and one of its founders – Barbara Behr. It’s a flashback to a pre-internet age, where kinky porn was rare and existed very much in the shadows.

House of Milan was on of the ‘big’ three publishers of bondage material from the mid 70’s through to mid 90’s. I put ‘big’ in quotation marks because all three – HOM, Harmony Concepts, Calstar – were tiny and very niche by modern standards. It’s an era I’ve heard referred to as The Golden Age of Bondage Productions, which strikes me as a very misleading title. It suggests a lot of great material was being produced, where the reality was that the bondage was often poor and the shots of low quality. Operating on the fringes of legality with limited sales channels and minimal competition doesn’t typically lead to a high quality product.

That said, I do find the era and the people who worked in it fascinating. A lot of the artists have since become recognized, but the models, editors and photographers are a lot harder to track down. I featured a post on John Blakemore back in 2012 and I’m happy to add this one on Barbara. She worked as an editor, organizer and general manager for HOM, and involved a lot of other women in the business before sadly passing away in the 90’s.

Most of the content produced was M/f, but there was the occasional femdom. For example, this magazine, which was edited by Barbara and published in 1983.

Kink in the Produce Aisle

It’s always fun when your kinks sneak up on you. I had that experience today in Whole Foods. After recovering from my bout of Covid I needed to restock my cupboards. I was therefore squeezing fruit and weighing vegetables in the produce section when I was passed by a female store employee in a long rubber apron. Totally conventional outfit for someone whose job is dealing with moist and sticky products and 100%  practical. However, some tiny bit of my brain still went “Oooh! Long rubber apron. That’s kind of hot.”

Admittedly, I had been stuck in my condo for a week alone, so it’s possible I was slightly sensory deprived. She was also kind of cute. But that was an observation made only after the industrial green apron had kicked into life some kinky braincells. It’s always fun to be reminded of how weird you can be whilst trying to pick between bunches of cilantro.

This is Domina Juniper Dolor, sporting the kind of apron you’re very unlikely to find in your local grocery store. She’s a Bay area based pro-domme and this was sourced via her twitter feed.

DomCon 2024

DomCon LA just wrapped up and – as is their tradition – there was a big group shot of all the dommes. Or at least all those who were comfortable appearing on camera. The copy below is shrunk to fit my format, but you can see the original fullsize version by sweet girl julia here.

I’ve featured these shots before (e.g. 2019 here) and I always enjoy them. It reminds me of what a big wide world it is and how many kinky people are out there. Although I spend a lot of time in online kinky spaces (twitter, tumblr, blogs like this, pro-domme sites, etc.) I still tend to see a lot of the same faces and names. It’s only natural – the human brain can only handle so many connections. Seeing a shot like this, where I recognize very few people, is a good reminder of the bigger picture.

Originally posted in this tweet. If you’d like to support the photographer of all these shots over the years then the tweet also has her cashapp info.

The Queen Archetype

The Queen femdom archetype is the fourth and final one defined by Mistress Damiana Chi. It’s probably the one with the biggest gap between it’s depiction online in pro-domme advertising and its actual usage.

Online it’s a fantasy depicted everywhere – the regal and superior domme who is so much better than all you lowly servant types. In a pro-domme sessions it would seem harder to work with. It needs a servant type dynamic, where seems easier in a more organic lifestyle set-up. The mainstream depiction of pro-domme lifestyle – where they lounge around sneering at dutiful minions as they clean their house and peel grapes – rarely seems to work out in reality.

This regal figure is Mistress Luna May. She’s a pro-domme based in Heidelberg, Germany. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

The Mommy Archetype

Our exploration of femdom archetypes brings us to the third on the list – the mommy domme.

Arguably this is the most ambiguous one. The most obvious characteristics it brings to mind are nurturing, controlling and infantilizing. Someone who knows what’s best for you and won’t let you stray far from that path. However, the modern mommy domme kink has become a much more widespread phenomena than it used to be, with a wide range of play styles. It’s not just about ABDL and bedtime spankings. Now they can also be mean, manipulating, authoritarian, jealous and sexual. I think it’s a case where there’s both an archetype and a powerful taboo roleplay, which can intersect in complicated ways.

I’m not entirely sure where I found this image, but it definitely gave me mommy domme vibes.

The Seductress Archetype

Continuing my series of posts on the Femdom Archetypes, we get to the seductress – the second one listed in Mistress Damiani Chi’s new book.

It’s an archetype as old as history. The famous Sirens of the Odyssey date to around the 8th century BC, but they were no doubt part of a much older storytelling tradition. Likely to the first man who fell for a beautiful woman and lived to regret it.

In modern femdom culture, the kink I associate most closely with the seductress is tease and denial. The lure of sensuality and beauty, hiding the hook of frustration. It therefore makes sense to feature a domme who excels both in seduction and that particular kink – Mistress Iris. She recently tweeted a lovely short video that combines sensual transformation and seduction. It’s well worth a watch. The image below was also shared via her twitter account. It’s a look guaranteed to cause most men – not just Greek sailors – to leap to their doom when called.

You can find more from Mistress Iris via twitter, her patreon and her mindful surrender site.

Finally, I couldn’t do a post mentioning Sirens without linking to Oglaf’s take on them – see here and here. Who wouldn’t go for some extra fucky Nymph water?

Archetypes Continued

My last post on Damiana Chi’s book on Dominatrix archetypes got me thinking: What is the full set of archetypes?

The book in question specifies four: Authoritarian, Seductress, Mother and Queen. That does seem a pretty core set, but is anything missing?

At first I thought roles like Teacher or Nurse should be included. After all, they are common characters used in scenes. However, on reflection I think they’re just window dressing on the underlying archetype. A teacher is typically an authoritarian. A nurse can be played as any of the above four archetypes, depending on the dynamic required.

Perhaps better suggestions for additional archetypes would be Princess and Amazon. Where you might think of a Queen as haughty, icy and commanding, a Princess archetype would be manipulative, playful and self-centered. I’m not sure that combination aligns with any of the above four. Similarly, I think of an Amazon archetype as being about physical power, independence and forcefulness, which doesn’t necessarily align with an Authoritarian or Queen.

Whatever the complete set is, the topic at least gives me a chance to feature images of each type. So for the next few posts, I’ll try and find a good examples. This seems like a perfect one for the Authoritarian archetype.

Image source is obviously OWK. Sourced via Assertive Ladies tumblr.

The Dominatrix Archetypes

If you’re a fan of guidebooks and learning more about BDSM then you might enjoy this new release – The Dominatrix Archetypes by Mistress Damiana Chi. I’ve not read it yet myself but I’ve played with Mistress Damiana several times in the past (including just a few weeks ago) and I know her to be a very skilled domme. She’s been a successful pro-domme in LA for many years now, so she’s doubtless got a lot of insight to share.

From her description of the book…

If you are a Woman who is a lifestyle or professional Dominatrix or you want to become one, this book will show you how to REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY YOU DOMINATE.

If you are a submissive, you will also gain tremendous value from reading this book. You will learn about what you should and deserve to experience with an ethical, conscious Dominatrix.

You can find it on Amazon or via its official site.

Aftermath

One of my favorite candid shots is the post-session one. There’s a lot of inherent ambiguity in them. You know there was some probably some intense and high energy event that just happened, but you don’t know exactly what or how it unfolded. We’re just left guessing from the aftermath.

This is a great example, posted by Maîtresse Blanche. It was taken after ‘a big lesson’. We can only guess at what that might have been, but I’m sure it was appreciated by all those involved.

Maîtresse Blanche is a pro-domme based in France. You can find her professional site here and her Twitter feed here.