London gallery The Little Black Gallery is hosting Full Throttle — the second part of a retrospective of work by legendary photographer Bob Carlos Clarke — until June 5.

The exhibition, in association with the Bob Carlos Clarke Foundation, features a selection of pictures from Bob’s 30 year career. The first part of the retrospective, Wall To Wall, was a sell-out in 2009. 

The Estate of Bob Carlos Clarke has also released for the first time “estate editions” of nine of Bob’s famous early images as 16 x 20in digital bromide prints in editions of 25 for £350 + VAT per print.

All nine — Including such classics as Black Is My True Love’s Heart, Dreamkeeper and Courtesan — can be seen in our gallery on the right.

Bob Carlos Clarke was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1950 and came to England in 1964 to study art and design at The West Sussex College of Art, where he developed an interest in photography. He then went on to The London College of Printing, before completing his degree at the Royal College of Art in 1975. 

He worked in almost every sphere of photography, winning numerous awards for his high-profile advertising campaigns, recognition for his photojournalism and portraits of celebrities, and international acclaim from collectors of fine prints. 

He died in 2006 and is now recognised as one of Britain’s most important and collectable photographers.

Although fetish imagery was only one element of his oeuvre, his work in this field, and in particular his collaborations with latex fashion pioneer Daniel James, provided some of the most memorable iconography of the early 1980s London fetish scene.

His name is frequently quoted by fetish photographers today as one of the two most important influences on the modern genre — the other being Helmut Newton.

Bob Carlos Clarke produced six books: The Illustrated Delta of Venus (1979), Obsession (1981), The Dark Summer (1985), White Heat (1990), Shooting Sex (2002), and Love Dolls Never Die (2004).

He also photographed Maid In London, the glossy Daniel James catalogue published in 1985. A biography by Simon Garfield, Exposure, was published by Ebury Press in 2009.

Clarke and Helmut Newton are frequently quoted by photographers as the two most important influences on the modern fetish genre