1/31.2026/SATURDAY6:16AM
RICK CASTRO: THE BONDS OF SEX- 2005
Tetu Magazine issue#103, Septembre, 2005
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Text- Patrick Thevenin, published by the late Pierre Bergé
Bondage, that age-old sexual fantasy is something Rick Castro talks about better than anyone else.
The American photographer, born in 1958, has made it his trademark as his book shows. 13 Years of Bondage: The Photography of Rick Castro, 1990-2003, some of which Tetu has published.
According to the artist bondage encompasses "any form of restraint or immobility, whether self-administered or inflicted by another person, in a mental or physical way." He continues: "Bondage has always been a part of me. When I was a child, I would go to school dreaming of castles with boys tied up inside. I desperately searched through magazines for images related to the subject. I started tying up boys when I was 10 years old, and then I found other partners, and it became a creative passion... To the point that I made it the theme of my artistic work."
We are struck by Castro's distinctive aesthetic which falls within the tradition of male nude photography popularized by studios like Champion and magazines such as Physique Pictorial with the added elements of bondage and sadomasochism. Although Castro prefers to cite other influences such as Pierre Molinier ("the best example of a fetishistic photographer") Brassai ("for his sense of light and staging") Guy Bourdin ("for his good taste") Robert Opel ("an underground revolutionary of the 1970s gay scene") and Pasolini ("my greatest inspiration, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is the best film of all time"). While the use of black and white and the fetishism of leather might evoke Robert Mapplethorpe Rick Castro distances himself from this comparison.
“In 1986” he recalls “Mapplethorpe hit on me at a book signing. I thought he was very sexy but I was too young and shy to seize the opportunity. I respect the way he created powerful and sexual imagery but I find his style too cold and detached from his subject and strangely I've never liked his work.” In Castro's photographs the models never seem humiliated. Quite the opposite: even when they have a gag in their mouths or are covered in tape the photographer grants them a new dignity they are as if sublimated by the lens. With great poetic sensibility 13 Years Of Bondage is at once a documentary a declaration of love and a fantasy.
“Bondage is essential to my life” Castro emphasizes. “When I was younger I tried to understand the reasons behind these fantasies. Today I've accepted that I don't need to understand everything. My work comes from a very intimate part of my soul.”
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