Irving  Klaw

Irving Klaw (November 9, 1910 – September 3, 1966), self-named the "Pin-up King", was an influential American merchant of sexploitation, fetish, and Hollywood glamour pin-up photographs and films. Like his predecessor, Charles Guyette, who was also a merchant of fetish-themed photographs, Klaw was not a photographer, but a merchandiser of fetish art imagery and films. His great contribution to the world was to commission fetish art (with the likes of models like Bettie Page, June King, Joan Rydell, Jackie Miller, et al.) Irving Klaw is a central figure in what fetish art historian Richard Pérez Seves has designated as the "Bizarre Underground," the pre-1970 fetish art years.

From late 1951 or early 1952 through 1957, Bettie Page posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with pin-up and BDSM themes, making her the first famous bondage model. Klaw also used Page in dozens of short, black-and-white 8mm and 16mm "specialty" films, which catered to specific requests from his clientele. These silent one-reel featurettes showed women clad in lingerie and high heels, acting out fetishistic scenarios of abduction, domination, and slave-training; bondage, spanking, and elaborate leather costumes and restraints were included periodically. Page alternated between playing a stern dominatrix, and a helpless victim bound hand and foot.

These photographs came from the publisher of Bettie Page's fanzine and were obtained from the Irving Klaw Files Auctions.

There are no items for this artist this time.