Retro bondage illustrations

BDSM looks damn cool, no way around it. From the inventor of Japanese rope bondage to a Salvador Dali-approved heretic to Tom of Finland, here are nine of the most iconic retro illustrators to ever put fetish to paper. Worshipped by many as the daddy of modern kinbaku, or Japanese rope bondage, Seiu Ito would tie up his models usually his wives and mistresses and photograph them dangling as references for his paintings. Before this, kinbaku also known as shibari had been used solely by Edo-period police to restrain prisoners. Ito developed a lifelong fascination with torture art from a young age, going on to stage artsy photoshoots of snow torture in his garden and starting several theater groups that specialized in torture scenes.

In the first half of the 20th century they did, however, have their providers, and one of them was Irving Klaw , the self-proclaimed Pin Up King. He was a pioneer in fetish art, and obviously had an eye for recognizing a special sort of edgy beauty of his era. Klaw was a photographer and a filmmaker, but prior to that he used to sell movie star stills, which brought him great popularity. With help from his sister Paula, Klaw gradually made a burlesque empire of his own called Nutrix , photographing models that became big stars later on — Tempest Storm, Blaze Starr, Baby Lake. However, Klaw started seeing the end of his career not long after it began, as he started facing political and legal problems, after which he burned most of his negatives.