Press Releases
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kiss
of Fire
A Romantic View of Sadomasochism
by Barbara Nitke, with introduction by A.D.
Coleman
JUST RELEASED BY KEHRER VERLAG
NEW YORK, N.Y. OCTOBER 25, 2003 —
Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism,
photographed and written by Barbara Nitke with an introduction
by A.D. Coleman, has
just been released by Kehrer Verlag. (61 B/W photographs
in duotone, 104 pages, $40. Distributed by Consortium.)
A continuation of Barbara Nitke’s
documentation of issues of human sexual desire, Kiss
of Fire is a respectful, humane look at sadomasochism
as practiced between loving, trusting partners in committed
relationships. It provides a non-exploitive insight
into a practice an estimated 10% of Americans participate
in with consensual partners.
In Kiss of Fire, Nitke writes of
her experience exploring the sadomasochistic community
and her increasing desire to photograph the lovers she
saw. Unlike the fetish fashion books that dominate this
niche, Nitke has captured the intense energy and passion
of genuine sadomasochistic lovers. Her work is an insiders
view into the issues of trust, intimacy and negotiation
that makes these relationships possible.
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Most SM participants consists of middle-class
people – nurses, lawyers, computer experts, corporate
managers – ranging in age from 21 to 80. ‘SM
practitioners are ordinary people of all ages, representing
all socio-economic levels of society,” according
to Susan Wright of the National Coalition for Sexual
Freedom. “Nitke’s photography shows the beauty
of sadomasochism and the love it takes to make the power
exchange inherent to it work.”
From the time Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs
were used to help justify the defunding of the National
Endowment of the Arts, there has been a question whether
sadomasochism
is a fit subject for art. A.D. Coleman addresses the
issue eloquently in his introduction:
Within the present generation of photographers,
a distinct cohort – more numerous by far than
any preceding it – has undertaken the exploration
of what I’ve come to call the “photo-erotic”
– not just the making of sexually provocative
photographs, but the creation of images that explicitly
observe our sexual lives, produced in collaboration
with people willing to have their own sexual behaviors
described, interpreted, and put on the public record
by these photographers.
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This represents a shift of no small proportions
in cultural attitudes toward the representation of
and discourse about human sexuality, a major leap
forward in frankness about matters sexual and full
disclosure of relevant particulars. At a time when
varieties of sexual practice once considered marginal
and taboo – gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,
SM, B&D, and more – have moved from the periphery
to the center, and from the closet into the open,
the work of photographers like Barbara Nitke has helped
bring the discussion of these sexual alternatives
into the mainstream…
Barbara Nitke is a New York City artist
who has been exploring issues of sexual relationship
through photography since 1982. She is the current president
of the Camera Club of New York (founded in 1884 by Alfred
Stieglitz) and is on the faculty of the School of Visual
Arts in New York. Her work has been the subject of one-woman
exhibitions in New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Provincetown,
Philadelphia and in Europe. Nitke is a frequent lecturer
on the topic of SM to both practitioners and the general
public.
Nitke is currently a co-plaintiff with
the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom in challenging
John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States
of America, and the federal Communications Decency Act
(CDA) which regulates obscenity on the Internet. For
more information: www.ncsfreedom.org.
For PDF version of this Press Relsease,
please write to:
.
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