For a photographer who has built his reputation on creating distinctive black and white fetish imagery, a move into colour is not to be taken lightly. The arcane craft of the darkroom does not easily release its grip on the practitioner. And when the subject is fetishism, whose portrayal in the traditional medium is still so widely enjoyed, a shift into colour might seem to be even more of a shot in the dark.
But in the new work of Steve Diet Goedde, created since he left (as he puts it) the monochromatic landscape of his native Chicago for the saturated colour of California, it is clear that the gamble has paid off. His ability to capture mood, personality, attitude and (importantly) humour in the fetish moment has not diminished. His knack for conjuring eroticism from a quirky pose, an unusual angle or a bold crop is as sharp as ever. In Goedde's work, colour has not obscured meaning - it has simply enhanced detail.
His second book for Stemmle, The Beauty of Fetish Vol. 2, majors on Goedde's new full colour oeuvre. This big coffee table book includes no less than 140 colour and duotone plates, the latter demonstrating not only that Steve hasn't abandoned black and white but also just how well his old and new styles coexist....