BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
13 january 2012
Photographer spent four months documenting Tokyo's love hotel culture by Molly Cormier
Source: herenb.canadaeast.com - Canadaeast.com - Canada
JAPAN - Outside a room in one of Tokyo's biggest love hotels, a woman bows deeply in front of her male client, acknowledging her lower place in society.
Then, almost the moment she steps inside, the roles are reversed. The woman becomes the dominatrix, and the man, her slave.
"That's how (the women) are during their working time, but the second they get out of their work, they are back to their normal Japanese, submissive self. They clash between how they are at work and how they are in real life. There is a real contrast," says Nathalie Daoust, an avant-garde photographer whose edgy exhibit, Tokyo Hotel Story, arrived at Fredericton's Gallery Connexion this week.
For the exhibit, Daoust penetrated the mysterious walls of the Alpha In, one of Tokyo's many love hotels, which are used for both prostitution and one-night sojourns between couples. A 2009 report by CNN said love hotels in Japan rake in an estimated $40 billion a year in revenue.
Over the course of four months, Daoust photographed women in their private rooms, dressed in the uniform of a dominatrix and surrounded by specialized equipment.
On the phone from Montreal, where she first followed her passion as a photography student in college, Daoust explains how she fled to New York for her first professional project.
Her work in New York was also based on a hotel, and eventually became a photography book called New York Hotel Story.
"When I did this project in New York many people told me they had the same type of hotel in Japan, so I moved in 2001 to Tokyo to do a project on the love hotels of Japan."
Daoust says Japanese love hotels are as numerous as arcades, and are part of the mainstream - not taboo as in the Western world. Despite their popularity, the hotel's workers were wary about letting Daoust inside to capture their world on film.
"The owner wouldn't let me photograph the hotel, and after much convincing he told me I could if only I would do a whole project on his hotel."
In 2009, she returned to Tokyo to focus on the Alpha In - a hotel that specializes in sadomasochism and adventure. Every day for four months, Daoust made the five-minute walk from her hilltop home to the hotel, where she photographed from morning to night. At lunchtime she'd meet with the owner, and in the afternoon, she'd meet up with the women who had given her - and her camera - their full trust.
"This hotel doesn't allow anyone to photograph there. So because the owner finally said yes, they understood it was something different. A lot of people wanted to go there to make porn photos or videos. So when the owner said yes to me they understood it was OK."
Soon, they became friends, and all the girls brought family and friends to the project's opening exhibition in Tokyo.
"It was something special for them. It was art-related and not pornography...I'm still in contact with pretty much all of them."
Daoust, who has explored female sexuality and gender stereotypes in past work, says her understanding of the women deepened the more time she spent at the hotel.
"After meeting them, I understand them better," Daoust said. "They are very good people. Japan isn't a poor country, so it's not forced on them and it's their own choice. I respect them more than I did when I started the project."
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Fredericton Tokyo Hotel Story
Gallery Connexion, Chestnut Complex, 440 York St. 454-1433. Opening Reception: Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. Artist Talk: Saturday, Jan. 14 at 2 p.m.
Nathalie Daoust got her start in 1997 while photographing the themed, painted rooms of the Carlton Arms Hotel in New York. Since then, Daoust has created several new conceptual projects that have taken her all over the world, including a brothel in Brazil, a darkroom in Sydney and the snow-capped Swiss Alps.
Known for experimenting with nontraditional mediums of photography, Daoust used two cameras to capture some 3D images, which can be viewed in Tokyo Hotel Story with the help of 3D glasses.
"A 3D photo is the same as your eyes. We see in 3D because we have two eyes. If you take a photo and you put two cameras at the same space of your eyes, it will create a 3D image after when you put those two photos together on the computer," she explains.
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