CHARLES GUYETTE:

GODFATHER OF AMERICAN FETISH ART

Richard Pérez Seves

(self-published, softcover, $9.99/£7.68)

Reviewed by Tony Mitchell

Charles Guyette is a name that you might have seen mentioned in passing in books about the ‘golden age’ of American fetish imagery — the period from the mid 1930s to early ’60s associated with the publishing work of Irving Klaw, John Willie, Robert Harrison and Leonard Burtman among others.

But the chances are, these were indeed only passing mentions.

If New York collector, writer and fetish historian Richard Pérez Seves had not decided to assemble what he knew about Charles Guyette (along with a substantial selection of images) into this paperback, this influential forerunner of the genre’s better known exponents would have continued a lot longer as the great unsung hero of American fetish art.

Seves decided to produce this book after learning that the release of his major upcoming work Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground would be delayed by his publisher, Schiffer, until next year.

But while such a hold-up must be frustrating for the author, his decision to put the hiatus to good use has resulted in much valuable light being cast on a deserving but neglected fetish pioneer.

With its 180 pages measuring 190 x 240mm (roughly midway between A4 and A5), Seves’ print-on-demand, black-and-white tome combines thorough research and an easily digestible style with an almost ‘punk’ publishing ethos reminiscent of various famed underground imprints of the 1970s.

The majority of the book’s pages are devoted to reproduction of images which, with the exception of one reprinted by John Willie, were unattributed to Charles Guyette. Seves argues that this lack of crediting partly accounts for his obscurity.

But there were also other contributing factors. One may have been that Guyette was not, as far as is known, the actual photographer of his material.

He certainly did provide the ‘deviant’ artistic vision for the pictures, as well as making the costumes and probably many of the props. But according to Seves, he was essentially “a wheeler and dealer, an entrepreneur who… inspired fantasy and creativity”.

In this respect, explains the author, Guyette “would serve as the model for Irving Klaw, his obvious