YVONNE ROMAIN in British movie Circus of Horrors (1960). Kat says that, wishing to replicate the ‘gruesome facial mutilation’ of Romain’s character Melina in that film, she would ‘make prosthetic wounds and apply them to my face – that’s where the name Meatface comes from’
Although it might sound like Kat Toronto was having a lot of fun once she started getting back into photography post-surgery, the reality at that time, she confesses, is that she was very lonely.
Turning photography into art therapy
“It was a really horrible time in my personal life. I was in a very unhappy and emotionally traumatic relationship and I was still healing from the surgery.”
She says the combined effect of those two factors led to “an overwhelming desire” to hurt herself and even end her life.
“But to be able to make these images on my own felt self-sufficient, and they became a way to express the things that I wasn’t able to talk to many people about.
“Essentially, I decided that, instead of actually self-harming (or worse, ultimately killing myself), I would express these desires through make-up and special effects.
“I was watching a lot of British horror movies from the 1960s and wanted to replicate the gruesome face mutilation of Yvonne Romain’s character in Circus of Horrors.
“Instead of self-harming I would make prosthetic wounds and apply them to my face — that’s where the name ‘Meatface’ comes from. It’s hard for me to look at these images now, but making them was a kind of therapy.
“Of course, this route isn’t for everyone and I’m sure my story of using this form of art probably comes off as a bit bizarre to some. But the bottom line is that it was the art that got me through.”
2015: year of big, positive life changes
In 2015, things suddenly started changing quickly for the better for Kat. A few months after buying the Spectra camera, she had ended her problematic long-term relationship.
And in April 2015, she made her first visit to the UK, where she met and fell in love with Garry Vanderhorne. The pair embarked on a long-distance relationship.
In the summer of 2015 she went to live with her aunt in the old family house her grandparents had built in 1917. Her dad lived next door in a second house the grandparents had built in the 1930s.
“Suddenly I wasn’t holed up in a tiny room any more and I didn’t have to hide what I was doing. The whole house was my shooting ground and I just went for it.
Living there really nurtured the growth of Miss Meatface — I would shoot continuously every day when I got home from work.”
In December 2015 Kat quit her job at the library, and began looking for a way to move to the UK.
Kat and Garry got married in late 2016, and after her spouse visa was eventually approved (following the usual prolonged bureaucratic immigration process), Kat moved to England to live with Garry fulltime at the end of 2017.
What was Kat’s new life in London like when she first arrived — at a time when Resistance Gallery was still a thriving venue and London a throbbing fetish party hub? I suggest she must at least have found her pervy social circle expanding dramatically.
“I can safely say that my pervy social circle grew by leaps and bounds with my move to the UK!” she confirms.
“Of course before the pandemic we were going out much more often than current times, and since Resistance Gallery was still going strong we were also involved in fetish events and other related things happening at the venue.
“Now it seems like the only time we socialise in any sense of the word is at small private parties at our friends’ houses. I don’t think I’ve been out to a club since Covid hit.
“But we are looking forward to heading to Club Vanitas in the near future and I’d love to attend a Torture Garden Los Angeles event.”
Finally after covid disruption: funding
When the first lockdown in 2020 put venues like Resistance Gallery out of bounds for events, Garry Vanderhorne hoped (as a lot of other venue owners did) that he could weather the storm and re-open in due course.
But after a year of hanging on while covid restrictions kept the venue closed, he finally had to admit defeat and close Resistance for good in March 2021.
The pandemic also disrupted some publishers’ schedules, and in Circa’s case this meant having to delay the original publication date planned for the Miss Meatface book.
The combination of the venue closure and book postponement put considerable strain on the couple’s finances. So of course they have welcomed the news that Circa is at last crowdfunding Miss Meatface with a view to early summer publication.
At the time of writing (Feb 14), images confirmed for inclusion in Miss Meatface are all from Kat Toronto’s pre-2019 work, and the selection in this article’s galleries reflect that.
However, Circa publisher David Jenkins has asked Kat to provide more Polaroids from 2019 to the present day to bring the book’s content right up to date.
The pair are due to sit down with the newer stuff as soon as the Kickstarter campaign has launched, to decide on which more recent material to include.
So while the publication delay has been unfortunate in one sense, the plus side is that purchasers of the book will now enjoy a lot of newer additional content that wasn’t planned for the original volume.
We’ve already covered some of the influences — vintage sci-fi magazine covers, the images in John Willie’s Bizarre magazines, the work of photographers Widkin, Molinier and Bellocq, and British 1960s horror movies — that played a role in the development of Kat Toronto’s fetish tastes, and her Miss Meatface alter ego specifically.
How matriarchs helped make Meatface
But our account of Meatface’s evolutionary journey would not be complete without including the influence on Kat of two family matriarchs — her grandmother and great-grandmother.
“I’ve always been a very nostalgic person and never wanted to live in my own time,” the photographer explains. “Growing up, I was close with my grandmother Désirée, and though I never met my great-grandmother Rubie, I heard so many stories about her that I felt like I had.
“She was a larger-than-life character who would drag my grandmother round town getting into fights with people. There are pictures of her all over my Dad’s house, even one of her wearing a cat’s-eye mask.
“As time passed I increasingly felt that both my grandmother and great-grandmother were somehow a part of Miss Meatface. That realisation allowed her character to really fall into place.
“Now there are certain things Meatface has to have before I can start shooting: the pearls; the gloves; the cat’s-eye mask; the cigarette. I feel like I’m channelling these women and getting to know them better through my work.”
I tell Kat that, rather than bordering on the morbid, this comes across to me more as a celebration — albeit of a slightly twisted kind — of her two revered ancestors.
“I know it sounds weird,” she admits, “but yes, I feel that when I transform myself into Miss Meatface, I create a magical connection of sorts with my grandmothers. One way I can kind of explain it is it feels akin to being a spirit medium of sorts — Miss Meatface is my connection to the spirit world.”
Kat’s first latex hood brings epiphany
This may help to explain Kat’s fondness for combining vintage clothing and props with the latex fetish items she favours for her photography.
“When I first started mixing latex with vintage clothing it was a stylistic choice,” she says. “I was always delighted with the combination but there are purists who say it has to be all latex or nothing. That’s not me — I’m a combination of weird textures, patterns and eras.
“I think that I had that epiphany when I got my first latex hood, which is the dark metallic blue Libidex hood that I wear in many of my early Polaroids. That would’ve been the summer of 2015, I think. I was definitely living at my aunt’s house at that point.”
Latex hoods quickly became a key element in the visual transformation to Miss Meatface that we see in her images.
But while there is an obvious intention to create a certain effect on the viewer, Kat also readily acknowledges that hoods and other tight latex attire also have an effect on the wearer.
She speaks knowingly of the comforting feelings of enclosure and restriction; the relinquishing of control; the sense of envelopment in a second skin that’s almost like armour.
“I have the same feeling when I put on gloves or pantyhose,” she reveals. “They have a very specific smell that reminds me of the dresser drawers in my grandmother’s house. When I was a kid, her house was always the safest place to be when everything else was uncertain.
“If I had trouble at school or after my parents separated and I didn’t know what might happen next, being there was comfortingly predictable.
“So I associate these things with safety. Miss Meatface is my protector, just like these cantankerous ladies.”
Kat says she her scene friends often relate similar ‘fetish development’ stories.
“I’ve found that many times it was through fond memories of certain articles of clothing worn by their mothers, grandmothers, or aunts that began their fetishistic obsessions. It’s all very fascinating!”
What next for Kat and Miss Meatface?
Assuming there are no further hold-ups and everything goes to plan, what does Kat Toronto have in mind for the rest of 2022?
“I’m just hoping to get this book out into the world (finally!) and be able to go on a book launch and exhibition tour of sorts,” she says. “I’m dying to shoot Meatface in the US again and to take her and her trusty MeatMaid on some more wild adventures.
“The medium of photography has been wonderful for me,” she adds, “because it allows me to act out all of my fantasies.
“I may not have grown up to be an actor or musician, but I can play anyone (or anything) I want in my performative photo shoots. In the universe I have created for Miss Meatface, anything is possible!”
READ MORE – GO TO PAGE 3 OF 3BELOW: Two galleries offering 30 larger versions of Polaroids from Kat Toronto’s Miss Meatface book, shot up to 2019. Out in June, the book itself will also include newer work from 2019 to the present. Click/tap either preview to open its gallery, then click/tap any gallery thumbnail to start slideshow
Tags: Book Releases, Fetish Photography, Fundraising, Performance Artists
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