MagLau, Fetish Ballad

In this new book from VerlagKettler, MagLau, an established Belgian photographer, has used a pseudonym to publish a ballad on the world of fetishist nights. Along way from the sanitised and idealised world of 50 Shades of Grey, Fetish Ballad takes us into the real world of fetishist nights in Tokyo, Paris and Amsterdam. The photos were shot live, without flash, capturing the atmosphere.
The black and white photos allow a certain distance from the harsh reality that is revealed in them. It’s a kind of aesthetic bias that defuses the harmful burden of what is viewed. The juxtaposition of other photos on the walls, the sea, the staircases, opens a dialogue about the practices that are unveiled. As described by the novelist Véronique Bergen, “MagLau’s singular eye instantly confronts us with his proposition of another view of the fetishist world. Far from everything being posed, the lens captures stolen moments, fragments of nocturnal life. The participants shot live are not playing. The aesthetic breaks with the glamour, the smoothing of fetishist art. In the nights of fetishism that he’s photographed over the years in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo, the artist has favored the offbeat, the flood of joy, the distress, the pleasure. You can detect, in this journey through the world of leather and chains, latex and ropes, hints of Nan Goldin… Like a relationship, a distant tribute, without mimicking anything, to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The codes of fetishism are less diverted from than replayed on the side of the emotion, backstage: It’s a question of going back, under the latex skin-suits, of descending into the music of tied-up, tattooed, shackled bodies. Without directing, MagLau captures the neo-fetishist tribes who invent other possibilities, other sexualities. There is nothing fixed in the black and white photographs that play with the haziness to summon up a fantasy world.”
She adds, “MagLau’s photos claw at us, caress us, lash us. They set free ceremonies of black eroticism! When the book is closed again, we are left with new languages of initiation, previously unpublished unconventional polarities. On fire at night, a cult ballad, a ballad to Fetishland.”
A book not just to be held in the hands, but to be discovered.
MagLau, Fetish Ballad
Published byVerlagKettler
http://www.verlag-kettler.de/
www.maglau.com