I remember the first time I went to a fetish club. It was January 1994.

I had bought a basque-type top from Camden Market. No online shops back then — no internet in fact. No pvc or latex clothing was available on the high street, and I was certainly not going to kit myself out in a Soho sex shop.

So there I was, wearing, as I saw it, risqué fetish gear under a black velvet jacket, hopping it to a feminist debate with Erica Jong, Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe first, then getting a bus to the legendary (and much-missed) Paradise Club in Angel, Islington to pop my fetish cherry at Torture Garden.

My eyes were full of wonder, and right away I was longing for the day I might be allowed to take pictures in such a place.

I was amazed I had not yet been to TG, as everything in my life, from my music taste to my aesthetics, leanings and hatred for conventional ‘pick- up’ clubs made me the (almost) perfect punter.

How on earth had I not heard of this until one of my models had mentioned it to me just months earlier? People were relaxed and friendly, the music was great, the performances inspiring, the outfits outrageous. I loved it.

Towards the end of the night, just as I was beginning to think I was blending in perfectly, someone accosted me on the stairs and sweetly said: “First time, is it?” Back to the drawing board then…

Photographing for Skin Two

The comment did not deter me. By the end of the year I would be one of a handful of photographers allowed to take pictures in the London fetish clubs, regularly documenting the scene for Skin Two magazine and building up my studio portfolio at the same time.

My background was in music photography. Having settled in London hoping to become a rock photographer, I had then been lured into the tattoo and piercing scene.

And from there, entering the fetish scene had been just a question of time.

I was still a photography student at the London College of Printing when I made my fetish debut. My final third year project was totally informed by my newly-found alma mater: I shot a series of portraits illustrating the Seven Deadly Sins using models, clothing and props from the scene.

My lecturers did not see it as a progressive piece, and to this day I feel there was a certain amount of bigotry in the air. But it did not matter; I was on my way to being a fully-fledged professional photographer despite their fettered views.

The end of the millennium and the following decade provided me with much stimulating visual material and a direct line to most of the alt/fetish models of that era. I loved the creative freedom, the printed image, the amazing models, the fabulous outfits, outrageous heels and accessories.

The exclusive club I was a part of gave me endless opportunities to explore kinky imagery and I loved it.

It was long before social media became our omnipotent master and commander, and I do not feel I would have been able to produce the kind of imagery I did, had the internet been well-established already.

I feel it was, despite the subject matter, a more innocent time. Our current obsessions with selfies and likes were not even on the horizon, and I have often thought that if these had already been in play, none of the imagery that came out of that period would have had a chance to become as special or as iconic as it did.

I remember being able to shoot (on film!) and take my time printing the images, then waiting for the right time and the right outlet to publish them.

Even when shooting for a client, the images were not frittered away in minutes. They would be used for their purpose, with no one needing hundreds of content pictures for pay sites or Facebook galleries.

A photographic image was allowed to stay special, to be a unique shot rather than one in a sequence from every angle that would end up diluting its collective power.

In more recent years, I cannot recall a shoot when I have not had to ‘reveal’ the images to the web before I had even had the time to edit my chosen ones.

Social media breaks the magic

Some shot — a candid image, a cheeky model selfie or a teaser — always finds its way to some social media platform, and the magic is broken.

Like I said, these are different times. People consume the photographic image differently, faster; images are liked and tagged without anyone actually looking at them in much depth.

They are smaller, they have to be enjoyed on a smartphone, they have to secure followers.

Sometimes the fetish image crosses over, its visual conventions adopted in fashion or fine art imagery. There, it is allowed to be detailed and unique, blown up and powerful.

But it is inevitably niche, and it only crosses over if adopted by already established mainstream photographers.

I produced my book Girls in 2007.

To put it into context, Facebook was launched in 2004 (and for a while it was only accessible to college students) and Instagram was unleashed in 2010.

Girls, published by Pictropia, is available to buy in two formats. The paperback edition, with 188 A4 pages, sells for £25 + shipping.

BELOW: the limited hardback edition of Girls