OBSESSION

The female nude has been an inspiration and an obsession for both the male and the female for a long time. Does the world need another collection of artistic studies of the female form? It's a question that can be answered with another question: Is the world bored with nature yet? The definite answer is a clear No.

The work of Martin Raphael Class engages the female form, nude, dressed, bound in fetish sub-genres or elegantly posed. These images combine a comforting nostalgia combined with darker, more introverted mood.

Martin Rafael Class has been a photographer for 17 years now and is clearly addicted to women. He began his adventures in the realm of erotica having exchanged a radar detector for a camera and then finding employment in a studio where he learnt the techniques of printing and studio lighting. By his own admission though, he learnt more of his chosen trade by studying other people's work in libraries and watching old black and white movies. When not shooting on location as opposed to in a studio, he is often to be found in his dark room, hunched over development dishes and perfecting his art.

Marc Blackie has been working in the areas of erotic and fetish photography since the mid-nineties. Working within his style of "Fetish Noir" (as christened by one reviewer) his images live within contrasting areas of dark erotica, deep emotion and occasional flashes of subtle humour leading to various exhibitions in his native London, mainland Europe and the United States. His work increasingly finds itself in various fetish magazines and photo anthologies, with his popular Disappointed Virginity website bringing his work to over 20,000 visitors a month.