Description
JOHN WILLIE:
PHOTO-BONDAGE
MASTER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF!
Okay, we’ve probably all heard it, or said it, or at least silently nurtured the heretical thought — there have been plenty of better rope tiers than the great John Willie. He was simply not in the same league as Carl McGuire or Jay Edwards when it comes to the rigorous and stylish application of rope. Nor did he strive for a graphic appeal in his photography that could be remotely considered artistic: most of his work was eminently snapshot-style.
But these technical shortcomings are completely insignificant. John Willie is a classic example of spirit and attitude overshadowing material flaws. If his photography was snapshot quality, it benefited from the immediacy and vividness of the best snapshots or even the best journalistic photography. And that’s undoubtedly what Willie wanted to convey, and so often did convey — a stirring realism that counterpointed his unparalleled sense of fantasy. Take, for example, the bondages Willie created by placing his curly-haired little blonde model in a dingy storeroom (pages 5 to 7). The positions themselves are rudimentary — with the exception of an imaginative cross-ankle tie — but Willie uses the graffiti-scrawled walls and shabby wooden floors to accentuate his model’s imperiled innocence. Would any viewer deny that these images stimulate their own fantasies far more than the same bondages could have done in a more antiseptic environment? Although there were illustrators of bondage themes before John Willie, his “The Race For The Gold Cup” was the first extended bondage narrative. When JW laid down pen and ink and took up the camera, he often utilized the story form that both he and his clients found so gratifying. Beginning on page 30, Willie again dramatically pits binder against bondee in “The Lazy Roommate.” Ropework quality throughout the scenario varies from indifferent to excellent, but Willie’s unquenchable enthusiasm for the conflict between the bound and gagged damsel and her rope-wielding nemesis is never in doubt. Neither is his skill in portraying the confrontation so vibrantly that he remains, more than 30 years after his death, the master of us all.
PHOTO-BONDAGE
MASTER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF!
Okay, we’ve probably all heard it, or said it, or at least silently nurtured the heretical thought — there have been plenty of better rope tiers than the great John Willie. He was simply not in the same league as Carl McGuire or Jay Edwards when it comes to the rigorous and stylish application of rope. Nor did he strive for a graphic appeal in his photography that could be remotely considered artistic: most of his work was eminently snapshot-style.
But these technical shortcomings are completely insignificant. John Willie is a classic example of spirit and attitude overshadowing material flaws. If his photography was snapshot quality, it benefited from the immediacy and vividness of the best snapshots or even the best journalistic photography. And that’s undoubtedly what Willie wanted to convey, and so often did convey — a stirring realism that counterpointed his unparalleled sense of fantasy. Take, for example, the bondages Willie created by placing his curly-haired little blonde model in a dingy storeroom (pages 5 to 7). The positions themselves are rudimentary — with the exception of an imaginative cross-ankle tie — but Willie uses the graffiti-scrawled walls and shabby wooden floors to accentuate his model’s imperiled innocence. Would any viewer deny that these images stimulate their own fantasies far more than the same bondages could have done in a more antiseptic environment? Although there were illustrators of bondage themes before John Willie, his “The Race For The Gold Cup” was the first extended bondage narrative. When JW laid down pen and ink and took up the camera, he often utilized the story form that both he and his clients found so gratifying. Beginning on page 30, Willie again dramatically pits binder against bondee in “The Lazy Roommate.” Ropework quality throughout the scenario varies from indifferent to excellent, but Willie’s unquenchable enthusiasm for the conflict between the bound and gagged damsel and her rope-wielding nemesis is never in doubt. Neither is his skill in portraying the confrontation so vibrantly that he remains, more than 30 years after his death, the master of us all.
