© Fabio da Motta
Nowadays, @damottafabio (as Brazilian photographer Fabio da Motta is better known) is a celebrated trademark on Instagram, with hundreds of thousands of (mostly gay) followers. His imagery features Japanese art of shibari as a starting point, but also plays with performative action, body sculpture, drawing lines with colourful ropes. The almost pornographic pictures, representing perhaps the experiences he lives (or might hope to live) with his models, are acclaimed by their audience. In this way, forging this insinuating atmosphere in his profile, he exhibits a rebellious, flourishing visibility of gay men within BDSM society.
Fabio da Motta’s photography appears when BDSM leaves the underworld and starts to fascinate the public, those who could enjoy their popcorn watching Fifty Shades of Grey. Indeed, as Camile Paglia acknowledges in Scholars in Bondaged, even ‘Harvard University granted official campus status to an undergraduate bondage and domination club.’
‘A Glamorous and Performative Bondage Flourishes on Instagram’
