POSSIBILITIES: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF JOHN WILLIE

This will be the end-all book on John Willie's photographic career, starting with his modest snapshots taken in Australia and going all the way through to his later days in New York and California. You get to see his progression from shooting with what was obviously a rather basic-quality box camera or low-end 35mm piece to taking photos with better quality 4x5's, Rolleis, and better 35mm cameras in the fifties and sixties. You also see his technique improve, his subject matter get progressively more risque, and his talent at composition and lighting improve as the years pass. The author obviously did extensive research on John Willie and has a sizable collection of his photographs. A LOT of myths about John Willie are set right in this book - he never met Bettie Page, let alone photographed her - he didn't like Irving Klaw and their partership was very brief. Willie had a lot of demons, he was bad with alcohol, bad with his finances, and generally good at making a mess out of his life - very sad tale for someone with so much imagination. There are more photos here than you'll likely ever find in any other single volume, and it's a huge book - WELL worth the money, this is one you buy to enjoy and as an investment - it will appreciate in value once these are out of print. The printing quality is outstanding, and as one person points out, I loved that the author chose to include a lot of Willie's photo shoots that didn't exactly go off as planned (bad lighting, too much noise in the photo, motion blur, etc.). John shot these photos, primarily, in a series with a model (most of whom are identified, which is great), and back in the days of film, if you didn't have the lighting right and the camera settings right, you ended up with a sub-par photo - this was especially tricky shooting indoors. Those sessions are included anyway, about a dozen or so of them, just so the subject matter isn't lost to history, and they're still fantastic to look at. As Willie's skills progressed in the 1950's, the lighting problems and other issues vanish and you have fantastic photos - quite a bit of bondage and fetish, but, what else would one expect from John Willie? Some of the photos are quite large, some are four and six to a page, some of the larger series which he sold as sets in the fifties are reduced to smaller sizes so they can tell their whole "story" which is how they were marketed and sold new to begin with. HIGHLY recommend this book if you're a photographer, love boudoir photography, fetish, or just seeing the history of how there is absolutely nothing new under the sun. NONE of these photos are what I would consider pornography. You won't see full frontal nudity in here, that's not what John was after. Rear ends, yes, once-in-a-while, breasts, yep, more often in the fifties and early sixties. Nudes in long black boots, yep, but, covering their "naughty bits" just enough to make it interesting and leave your imagination to run wild. This is a "must have" book if you're a fan of Irving Klaw-style photos, and it's a spectacular tribute to a man who was one of the pioneers of very good fetish photography, but alas, never managed to get his personal life in order. Excellent book, buy it while you still can.

This is a fantastic book, amazing photos. The only sort of downside is at in this day of super sharp digital shots, these are largely vintage 35mm, so very grainy. It does go with the vintage feel though,

I thought it was a collection of old photographs on various subjects but it a disgusting book. Do not buy it. In my opinion produced by and for misogynists.

John Willie’s real name was John Alexander Scott Coutts and he was born in Singapore 9 December, 1902.The family moved to England in 1903. John learned to draw as a child and soon showed real skill at that activity. “At about the age of puberty he became aware of another attraction—for women in high-heeled shoes—which had a strong sexual connotation for him. In his fantasies John wanted these women in high-heels to be tied-up (in order to rescue them?).” He would never outgrow these basic fantasies and would later help spread them world-wide. In 1923, John graduated from the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, after a legendary school athletic career that included rugby, cricket, track and field and boxing. He received a commission as Second Lieutenant, and joined the Royal Scots regiment. He made a bad marriage to Eveline Stella Frances Fisher in 1925 without permission of his regiment and against the wishes of his father and had to resign his military commission and was disowned by his father. He moved to Sidney, Australia and became a police constable. His marriage ended in 1930. In 1934 he met Holly Anna Farm, “who shared his interest in high-heeled shoes and bondage, and became his model, his muse, and eventually, his second wife.” Around 1936 he decided to found a fetish magazine. After four issues of his own publication called “Bizarre” plus an earlier test publication with another name, suspended publication. Willie was an excellent artist, photographer and editor but a terrible business man. He also had a life-long drinking problem. His first wife hand been either a waitress or bartender. Pubs were the center of his social life. Between 1952 and 1954 Willie started mass producing photographs. These photographs were for use in “Bizarre” or for sale through his mailing list that he called “5,000 Solid Citizens.” At this point, John had published twenty issues of “Bizarre”, four cartoon serials’ and a large number of bondage photographs. Most of these photographs were not great photographs, in fact they were technically very blah. The same bland lighting and white back grounds were in almost every picture. The best two images in this collection of hundreds of photos are reproduced on the front and back covers of the book and they are both of his wife Holly. The photo on the back cover may appear to the average viewer to be a funny photograph involving a couple making love in the back seat of an automobile. However, it is really only intended as a fetish fashion picture of the high heels and boots kicking wildly outside the car window.. “These photos were not intended as ‘art.’ They were meant for erotic stimulation., that is, as in Pornography. However, that description needs to be qualified: if one is not sexually stimulated—and not everyone is—by the content of these images then they are not pornographic. Coutts’s photographs did not contain, or even suggest, sexual activity; one has to imagine it, which may be difficult for many these days—imagination, that is.” This reviewer for instance is not turned on by extreme high heels. Even regular high heels are only interesting because they force the woman wearing them to stand up straight and tend to push out her breasts and rear end in a very flattering way. Willie “was a Pioneer in this genre—actually, its Creator—and it’s the content that most important.” Willie died quietly in his sleep after a long battle with a cancerous brain tumor in 1962. The book mentioned that he died on the same day as Marilyn Monroe passed away. He was sixty years old, but he had achieved his life-long dream even though he had had to spend most of his time working as a seaman or doing other types of physically hard labor to make a living and paying for his globe-trotting. As the reader examines the photographs included in this collection, which seems to resemble some kind of year book from a woman’s school, he or she will wonder who was buying these individual pictures. Some of them were bought by other fetish artists such as Eric Stanton. They probably wanted to see just how flexible women really are and how long could an individual be expected to remain bound in various contortions without experiencing physical damage or serious pain (real torture). The buyers may also have wanted to see various types of knots and props being used for bondage. Which furniture worked well? Which ladders and construction materials like wooden saw horses and scaffolding and in Willie’s case, various sized wooden barrels made good torture props? While many of these pictures are dated, they served Willie and other people’s fantasy needs at the time they were made and sold well. It’s really a quite extraordinary collection and provides a peek back across the decades to a long-vanished world.