Reviewed by Gary Meyer
(08/13/03)

The appeal of sadomasochism (aka kink, BDSM, leathersex) has always baffled all but its participants. Even those tolerant outsiders who understand its tenets of mutual consent and precise control cannot conceive why people would ever want to do those things to others or have them done to themselves in the first place. Barbara Nitke's astonishing photographs of this particular subset of lovers making love after their fashion may finally bridge that gap. Look at their faces, transfigured by bliss, wonder, adoration, abandon. Here pain and pleasure produce the same expression -- anguish or ecstasy, can we really tell which one they're feeling?

Look at the classical grain painting Nitke's camera has made of Ann and Ivan, a tall, elegant couple with equal-length flowing hair. They're nude in bed, fucking. Eight and a half months pregnant, Ann is on top, leaning backward. They are serene, content, complete. The photograph is entitled "Play Piercing IV." Barely visible hypodermic needles ring Ann's breasts and belly. (Nitke tells us that Ann consulted beforehand with her doctor about the safety of this type of play for her and her baby.) Torture? Perversion? Looking at Ann and Ivan, it hardly seems so.

Those dishing out the punishment have the most unexpected expressions. They don't look like sadists -- there's nary a Snidely Whiplash sneer. Regard the sequence of Gary disciplining his slave wynn, twisting his nipples, severely whipping and caning him. Gary's face is full of nothing but care and concern. He's concentrating on his awesome responsibility, on landing precisely the right strokes, while wynn writhes in his restraints, head shaved bald, his torso festooned with tattoos of barbed wire and the wings he's flying on. Separated by the whip's length, they are taking the same journey.

Look at Lolita, her adult visage vanished, glowing in innocent delight, a kid in a candy store, beaming over her partner Jack, nuzzling his head. Only Jack's lips are visible. He's encased head to toe in rubber, suspended in a hammock, wound in chains. The strength of their connection shines in Lolita's face.

Barbara Nitke's fine art credentials -- solo shows around the U.S. and in Europe, faculty position at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, president of the Camera Club of New York -- resulting from a career humanizing the most marginalized sexual subcultures, prove her dedication to developing her craft while telling the stories of the shunned. Her Web site documents her prior career as still photographer on over three hundred hardcore porn and fetish flicks. Her personal work captured these performers off duty, off guard, "like combat soldiers with a thousand yard stare." Something on the fetish sets engaged her, made her feel an inevitable pull. She writes on her Web site:

"The fetish scenes spoke to me in an entirely different way from the slam-bam hardcore scenes. They struck a deeper chord in a darker way. In them I saw echoes of highly-charged emotional situations, childhood demons, betrayals, power plays -- the feeling of being humiliated by someone you love, the little rush you get from zapping somebody. Seeing those dynamics turned into sources of sexual pleasure shocked me at first."

What they do can be as simple as a spanking, as spontaneous as some impromptu toe-sucking, or as highly choreographed as pony play. It doesn't have to hurt. Strung up for punishment, Velma favors Mark with a smarty-pants smirk. Keith and Stephanie dance naked around the pools of flame they've ignited on a stone dungeon floor. Buckled into her traces, Piper pulls a cart containing Lochai and MacKenzie. They're all having a lovely day in the country.

For its sixty beautifully reproduced black-and-white photographs of the highest traditional artistry, for its intimate portraits of sexual fulfillment, and for its revelation of romance in a subculture accused of harboring only violence, this book deserves an audience far beyond sadomasochists and the sadocurious. Refuting preconceptions about these practitioners of dark arts, Kiss of Fire allows them to speak for themselves, revealing that what they seek is no different than what any lovers seek, whatever the means of their lovemaking: the one who makes them whole.