Flowers and BDSM

Flowers and BDSM: Brazilian photographer Fabio da Motta turned bondage into poetry about submission, juicy buds and swollen loins

Many photographers are trying to find this line between “dirty sex” and art. This requires not only talent, but also an unusually subtle sense of the concepts of these concepts. So, these professional skills are tightly intertwined with the secret desires of the author of the photographs, Fabio Da Motta. The Brazilian photographer combined the Japanese art of tying shibari (sibari), flowers and naked men. Beauty, sex , art.

At the age of 19, the young photographer moved to Sao Paulo and enrolled in the Faculty of Graphic Design and Photography. While studying, he worked as a fashion photographer for L'Officiel Brazil magazine. Frequently photographing parties and amazing cultural events in Sao Paulo helped Fabio decide what he wanted to do. According to him, “it was on the sidelines and behind the scenes at parties that helped me understand who I am.”

For more than 15 years, Fabio Da Motta has been filming his bondage project. “BDSM has always intrigued and turned me on, now it’s a big part of my life. The first time I saw Sibari was on a work shoot. It was love at first sight - the repeated knots and intertwining of ropes captivated me forever,” says the photographer.

Fabio travels around the country photographing men he meets on Instagram and Grindr. He publishes his best photographs in books, which he sells in small editions, but they are very popular. Last year Fabio made a documentary about the artist's sibari tour and the art of submission.

Of course, the author’s works are political. According to the photographer, being an openly gay artist in his country is tantamount to rebelling against the regime. But this is his chance to influence attitudes towards queer people in highly religious and conservative Brazil. The country's president and government do not want to support the LGBT+ community and are hindering the fight for LGBT+ rights in Brazil. A similar attitude towards rainbow people was observed almost 50 years ago, in 1985, during the military dictatorship.

It seems that Fabio Da Motta, with his photographic works, is trying to undermine the very stereotype of BDSM as a synonym for rigidity and perversion. Fresh flowers add tenderness and fragility to the composition. Sibari is a pure metaphor for restraint of form, submission. The naked body is an element of eroticism. In this way, the photographer connects the images in the viewer's mind, elegantly depicting the constrained beauty of the models' bodies. “Sibari is not only a fetish, but also a means for meditation, self-knowledge, including the discovery of new sexual depths,” notes Fabio. The author posts his photographic works on Instagram, but the platform often blocks his posts. So you can find all the uncensored NSFW content on his Twitter . The most juice, as they say, for the soul and body of our readers.

Material prepared by: Artem Volkov

The material was prepared based on the original publication in VICE