A particularly fetishistic Flickr  group named ‘The Women with Very long Hair Pool’  with the sub heading describing it as: ‘Photos of women with very long hair. From thighs to the floor.’

Some bizarre videos of anonymous women with unbelievably long hair can be watched here and here

Read a very good article about John Samson’s work from Sight and Sound magazine here

INTERVIEW WITH AUSTRALIAN KINBAKUSHI HEBARI

http://www.imagetaylor.com/Art/Shibari
https://fetlife.com/users/566998
http://naturallytwisted.co/
http://www.sydneyropefestival.com.au/

What does Hebari mean?

It’s Japanese for skylark, I like the imagery of a light touch and freedom.

Where are you from, what kind of childhood did you have?

I’m from a small country town in Australia called Wagga Wagga, though we actually moved around quite a bit because of my father’s work. I was a typical ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) child I think; bloody annoying and into everything definitely trouble.

How did you first get into kink?

I was always into sex and bent ideas; I remember reading kinky stories in my father’s penthouse magazines when I was 9 or 10. To be honest that was probably the start of it for me. After that as I grew up I experimented, had sex early all that sort of stuff. By the time I was 16 I left school and headed off to be a roady, that’s where it really kicked off for me. Playing with girls (and boys at the time), I naturally used rope as part of play because it was something I knew a little about. As I got more exposure to kink through the gay leather scene and through clubs like Hellfire, kink and rope specifically became a more regular part of my sex life.

Can you link your kink personality and/or your fantasies to other traits of your personality or personal experiences?

I definitely have a strong and dominant personality, it’s something I’ve had to learn to tone down to give others space. I think that translates into being a top, I don’t really think of myself as a dominant. I’ve also always been quite empathetic, though not always sympathetic. I think empathy has led me to enjoy being a service top, I love taking my partners on a journey and I think empathy is integral to that.

And how did you evolve towards kinbaku especially?

Shibari/Kinbaku is certainly my focus now. My rope was mostly functional/Western for most of my journey to date. Sometime around 2000 I discovered images of Japanese bondage, that lead to copying the ties depicted as best as I could. Eventually I purchased books and videos from Japan and finally took part in workshops with Arisue Go in 2010. That was really the turning point for me, before that it was just about replicating the image, and then the function of restraint for sex or visuals.
That experience really spurred my interest and now Japanese rope bondage is my preference. I explored more about feel and connection. Studying with the likes of Osada Steve, Satomi and Hajime Kinoko

How did you learn? Who are your main inspirations, and why?

My inspiration has changed a lot over the years; it used to be very visual and now much less so. Images by Itou Seiu and a range of the older nawashi and photographers from the 50s and 60s, along with masters like Nureki Chimuo, Akechi Denki and Yukimura Haruki have all had a big impact on me. Maybe it’s that Shibari is driven by the Japanese view and aesthetic, something that feels very organic and at the same time precise, it’s a real challenge trying to understand another culture in that way.

Now my focus is much more on the connection and what I think of as the quality of the tie, the tension and the way it accentuates the body and mental state of the model. So masters like Yukimura Haruki, Osada Steve, Akira Naka and Kinoko are those who have guided my journey. Also there are Nawashi who are less known in the west such as Shishiwaka, Ero Ouji and Shiganawa Bingo that do amazing work and are incredibly inspiring to me.

What makes a good rigger?

A good rigger is someone that views rope as a craft to be constantly improved on, and someone that has the interest and empathy to take their partner on a journey. For me a rigger is art craftsman, part story teller and part lover.

How important is to you the “artistic” or “cultural” side of BDSM. I mean you perform and organize events, is BDSM something to share or something private?

Both really, a thriving community brings richness and diversity to the world I love. As the community grows people develop their own styles and sufficient numbers allow for events like the Sydney Rope Festival to work, and in so doing provide access to resources previously only available in Japan, locally. So working to grow the community is a big thing for me.

On the other hand there is an intensely private side to rope and play in general for me, my partners and I share things that are just between us and take journeys that aren’t for public display. In the end both are important to me

How is the Australian “scene”? Are you involved in it?

The scene in Australia is great actually, certainly in the major cities there are thriving communities with different flavours. Living in Sydney, my focus is largely here and luckily there are quite a few events running each month.
There is always the politics which you find in an small group but it’s minimal compared to other places I’ve been, which is great. Aside from the festival we run an event called Ligature which is a heavy play party. We’ve focused on performance to help develop that side of things here, aside from us, Hellfire has been running for about 20 years and fosters performers as well, with some luck we’ll start seeing more of that.

How did social media change the scene (if it did)?

It’s had a massive impact I think, just the fact that people can interact and discover kink without having to search out underground events, and build the courage to go means that a lot more people are giving kink a go in and out of the bedroom. Sites like Fetlife particularly are great, bringing the global fetish and kink communities together and facilitating that dialogue.

Do you make a living from BDSM-related activities?

lol definitely not, in fact to my knowledge, outside the largely female driven world of pro Domming there don’t seem to be many people that do, even the likes of Hajime Kinoko and Osada Steve have other jobs. My website Naturally Twisted, has a store that makes a little along with teaching etc, most of which just goes back into resources for the community such as the Sydney Rope Dojo space and maintenance of the websites I run such as the Peer Rope Site, which any Peer Rope Group can be a part of for free.

If not, what is your profession? (if you don’t mind answering)

I’m actually a network architect, so yet another IT guy :)

Do you have non BDSM-related hobbies?

Cycling and sailing really, though the sailing has taking a big back seat to kink over the last couple of years. Other than that there is photography but that is mostly kink now to, so not much no.

Tell me about the SRF; what is your involvement?

Sydney Rope Festival is something I’ve been working towards for a couple of years now along with the Rope Dojo team. The festival itself is all about bringing some of the best Japanese rope bondage talent to Australia from around the world. In the end most people can’t afford to trip off to Japan or Europe to learn so it’s great to be able to bring the talent to them along with some great teachers we have here already. I think it will really boost the rope community.

Who will we see there? What did you base your selection upon?

From the local pool of teachers we have Avalon, Zero, Mark, Lani and Aleni CV8 along with __S__, Lionne and more, all of which are world class educators. Then from out of town we are lucky enough to have people such as Peter Slemrian, Tatu, Wildties, Dr Phil and Milla Reika. We also have two special guests from Japan that we’ll be announcing soon.

Who else is involved in the SRF?

With anything like this there are always a huge number of people that put in time and effort to create the final event along with the organisational team, just have a look on the website for the full list, suffice to say I’m blessed with some great people around me.

What would you recommend to someone starting to practice bondage, or interested to start?

To be honest go and do some classes with someone reputable, that’s hard to say but asking around is the best bet or checking somewhere like Fetlife rope groups etc, if there isn’t anyone close by then look at resources like my website or Esinem’s DVDs, videos are definitely better than books. But the most important thing is not to get too caught up in the technical, in the end it’s about the connection with the person you are tying, so keep that in the forefront of your mind always.

we sit down
next to each other
and run out of stuff
to say

Photography: Lydia Whitmore
Art direction: Ted Young-Ing
Model: Ben Horsfield @ Elite
Hair & make-up: Sascha Rohn

1940s and 1950s covers from John Willie’s Bizarre Magazine.

 

 

A conversation I had one sunday afternoon, with burlesque performer and stripteaser Stephanie Brooks; aka Beatrix Von Bourbon.

 

 

 

SB: What were your first thoughts about tattooing?

I remember a friend mentioning that when we were growing up, I once said that  I would never get tattooed; that I didn’t understand why you would want to commit to the permanence. A few years later, I actually found myself doodling tattoo designs of all of these patterns and designs which meant something to me at the time, which is kind of funny to look back on. My first tattoo was when I was nineteen, and I was in a relationship with a boy whose father was a Tattooer. I can’t remember the exact decision making process, but I think it must have been the result of me doodling on myself and ended up getting 5 stars on my foot.

SB: But the aesthetic of your main tattoos are now so artist orientated and elaborate. How did you begin to come across such styles?

As with many things in my life, it is to do with the people who I have been in love with at the time; or has a special place for in my heart. I had three tattoos during my first relationship. When I moved to Leeds for Uni, I became friends with some Suicide Girls, who knew a lot more about tattoo artists than me and through them I learned a lot about different artists. Around 2005/6, I started a new relationship with a guy who has since gone on to be academically focused on tattoos as art, and he introduced me to tattooers who created work as art, and so far away from the flash that I thought was the extent of tattooing in my head. Thats how I learned about tattooing as an artistic medium, which I just knew so little about before.

SB: Are most of your tattoos inspired by Burlesque culture & mid 20th century era?

I think, my tattoos and my burlesque both come from the same place in me, and that they are both related to one another somehow within me and my identity. The reasons of being tattooed and the things Ive chose have really progressed as times passed. I’ve had tattoos because they look nice; because Ive fallen in love with the artists’ work and I just want something by them. I’ve had, what I would refer to as holes on my body where Ive had a tattoo done and its left my body out of balance, and so I want another piece to bring everything else into an alignment Im happy with. I’ve been tattooed about concepts and ideologies which I want on myself forever to (which I think is a bit naive, because you grow up and what seems important at the time won’t always been important, but at the same time it kind of becomes like a photography and you look back on it for nostalgia).

SB: What artists have you been tattooed by?

The first renowned artist that tattooed me was Aaron Bell from Slave to the Needle in Seattle; he did the centre part of my chest piece. Then I got tattooed by Uncle Alan from Denmark, who has done 4 pieces on me. I got also tattooed by Juho from Finland; I was walking past the stands at a convention, and I had the idea in my mind that I wanted a love letter tattooed behind an ear. I saw his work and he just seemed like the right person for it! Then I had three years of not getting any tattoos and I had stopped spending so much time around the tattoo collective, and so I hadn’t had the inspiration.
But a while ago, some work by Crispy Lennox from The Black Garden Studio popped up in my feed on Facebook and I was blown away by it. I set six months aside to get my head around the fact that I was going to get tattooed again and to save up for it, to make sure that I had the money set aside.
Now my body is out of balance again, so Im going to have to get some more tattoos to make sure that its in balance again

SB: How does one go about choosing a burlesque name?

There are loads of different techniques. For me, the name came even before I was performing. I was at a student house in Leeds, and there was a housemate of mine who really didn’t like her surname for a few reasons and she was tired of spelling it out to tele-sales people. One evening, when we were all merry, we started to hypothesise about what we would change our names to and I remember clearly saying Cherry Von Bourbon. About a year later, I began performing and still liked the ‘Von Bourbon’ part of the name but added Beatrix, from Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill: primarily because she is the antithesis of what I am. She’s really tough, and resilient; vengeful. A couple years later I found out that Beatrix Von Bourbon was actually a real person from the 14th century; a French royal of the time which is a nice coincidence.

SB: What do you think is to be taken from Burlesque as a performance, from a modern perspective?

It depends who you ask and what area of Burlesque you refer to, because there is quite a spectrum of approaches. Some audience members favour politically charged Burlesque (men playing with female imagery etc) which goes through to parody of celebrity culture, and satirical cultural references. It isn’t always with a striptease focus; often the comedy can be the focus. Sometimes the striptease is very minimal and there’s no reveal at the end. On the other end of the spectrum looks at how the art form has evolved over the past hundred years and is more aesthetically pleasing; focusing on beauty and movement, and just making the body look beautiful (classically referenced costuming)
One of the main problems with burlesque is that people don’t think that striptease is a skill, so if someone can include something that the audience definitely can’t do for themselves to some, that adds engagement.

Then you get people who really do play with the ways in which burlesque can be modern. Theres a whole night in New York, which focuses on video games in relation to burlesque and has people doing stripteases of video game characters.

SB: So what branch of Burlesque would you say your work is?

Currently, Im really wanting to move away from all of the nostalgia, because to me, when burlesque happened the first time round, in the late Victorian times, it was cutting edge at that time. It was really playing on the borders of decency; really pushing the line. These women were so bold and brassy, and courageous…. and now, a lot of performers look back to that time as providing an expression of sexuality that is safe; that when that style is shown now, it signified classic femininity and sexuality that is safe, tasteful and elegant. The fact is however, back when they were doing it, it was anything from that.

Now, I want to create numbers that are contemporary and modern. I’ve just put a ban on myself, of wearing red lipstick (laughs); generally, that’s out. Im changing a lot of the soundtracks to my numbers so that they are more modern and looking to use modern costuming techniques and aesthetics, aiming for more of a high fashion take on burlesque striptease.

SB: How difficult is it to convey eroticism within a routine?

When I started performing, I felt that is was required for me to pay homage to burlesques roots and to acknowledge the fact that the word itself comes from the Italian root; to parody or satire.
After going on a journey in taking it literally and creating numbers that reflected this archaic take on the word, I took a step back for some time and came to terms with how I see the word and what I wanted to convey through it.

Now in my numbers, I think I pretty much end up me showing a strand of myself, or acting out a sexual moment. Recently Ive started performing what I would call a classic striptease, (which is basically the removal of clothing) but the focus for me is my body language; things like breathing and what the pace of my breathing conveys to the audience (mimicking a sexual act). The more you perform, the more you learn about the neausances and the subtle things you can play with. Most of them involve thinking about an aspect of sexuality; some are purely aesthetic.

SB: Is your work ever received negatively? Do people ever not understand what you do?

Absolutely. Not so much from strangers, but more so from people who have watched me perform. Common criticisms are: what I do involves no skill, being too fat, too thin; tits too small, tits too big, having cellulite, having tattoos…

SB: Really? I was under the assumption that in most modern contexts, tattoos and Burlesque went hand in hand?

They used to, when I was starting out and it was about being rebellious, but now its more common to be asked for girls who are classically beautiful in the kind of anonymous sense, as opposed to the girls who are quite tattooed and fixed in terms of identity.

SB: Aside from your Burlesque work, what takes up your free time?

Ive been making stuff since I was a kid; and Ive been trying many different hobbies and pastimes in the process too. The first thing I really loved was dance and I always had a strong sense of movement when it came to dance. I always used to play musical instruments when I was younger too and always had something to lug around. I have always written creatively since around fourteen; I like the idea of making physical what I can picture in my head. Im about to start as a guest blogger for Erotica, so thats given me a reason to write every month. Im also massively into sewing, which I romanticise because my mothers, father, was a tailor and so its always been in the family. A couple of years ago, I mastered the basics and have just loved making things.

SB: So being a Burlesque perfomer as well as Stripper, how do you see your job title, socially?

I would say that women that work in strip clubs wouldn’t call me a stripper in the sense that I don’t go fully nude; I prefer saying Im a stripper, because I like the controversy that goes with it. I like that some people say to me; No you’re not, you’re an artist, because I can then say: “Don’t be so hard on strippers!” They’re artists too; they kind of work harder than I do in some ways. Part of their job is about making conversation with people and selling their work. They spend their entire night touting for business; they are on of the whole night, whereas I just have to do my number and leave.

For me, at this moment in time, the word stripper has more positive connotations than saying I am a Burlesquer, but ask me in two years time and I would have changed my opinion.

SB: How relevant do you feel Burlesque is socially; in the sense that we are surrounded by fast media via which we can access sex, nudity etc? Is it’s purpose now to keep us more grounded in regards to how we approach sexuality?

I think in terms of (female) Burlesque, it is by women, for women and its a space in which we can stop, pause and think about what sexuality really is and what it means to us, because in the age we live in now with the media, everything is so fast to the extent that we don’t have time to think about it. Performing live, and being in that exact physical space, there is no choice other to engage with that person; it is immediate and they are a real individual. When it comes to sexuality, burlesque can offer us a place to explore it in a slower and more purposeful manner, but at the same time Burlesque isn’t always about sexuality: sometimes its about humour for example.

It has always been by the working class, so in that sense it has always had to be socially relevant. I think as soon as burlesque just becomes a beautiful thing, it will be over. it has to be about our culture and how we fit into it.

 

Portrait/interview- Dorrell Merritt

 

http://vonbourbon.com/