Hussar's Motorcycle 'Leather Merchants' set,
leather fetish photos that bemused the beefcake world.
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| Dolphin Photography - Leather Merchants |
When Dolphin Photography split away from the Royale brand in 1961, 'Leather Merchants' was one of its launch photo-sets. It was a radical departure from its predecessor's work, featuring three men trying on different combinations of leather and rubber, fetishistic regalia. This was a far cry from Royale's usual biker imagery which never featured an actual motorcycle and rarely deviated from the dress formula of leather jackets and jeans. Their brushes with fetish are documented in a blog post (pending)
The submission of this type of imagery seemed to puzzle the editors of beefcake magazines. Its first publishers, Man Alive No 11, placed it in the middle of a men's fashion article headed 'Muscleman Gear'.
There is no catalogue description available for this set, the only information we have is from an ad in Fizeek No 21, which simply offered:- "Mike, Barry and Cliff with their leather gear". Quite so.
With the set images and this rudimentary information, however, Barry Stevens (centre) and Cliff Smith (left) are easily identified from their appearance together in the Woodshed (link pending). It is Mike Ridgeway (I believe) who makes up the threesome. Photos from his solo sets are a fair match, less conclusive, but his dates are a good fit and there are no other feasible Royale contenders called Mike.
I believe there to have been 32 to 36 images in this set, the archive has 15 of them.
There is little by way of a road map for this set, but it does have an erotic destination.
Read 'Leather Merchants'
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