TITLE: Rope: A Journey Within

This project explores the relationship between “the beauty of tight binding” known as Kinbaku-bi that dates back to 17th century Japan. In recent years, Kinbaku has become popular in Western culture as one of many dimensions of the BDSM scene. In Japan, bondage began not only as a sexual activity but as a means to bind captive prisoners of war. Later it drew inspiration from other art forms like Kabuki theater and woodblock prints. It further evolved as a bondage experience as the rope was applied to the human body and the pleasure became more about the journey than the destination. In this more artistic expression, the rope became an extension of the rope master hands and is used to communicate the connection between the rope master and the participant.

Today's mainstream modern culture associates bondage and rope imagery with acts of sex and confines it to that context which is quite limiting and mostly ignores and minimizes other aspects including the therapeutic role and the visual components that can be both profound as well as beautiful.

As a photographer, I am particularly fascinated by the symmetry of the lines and artistic forms of the rope and bondage process and the geometric effects that can be achieved by masters of the art and its participants.

AUTHOR: > joSon (United States)

Award-winning photographer joSon was born in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and an African American father. Sent to live with his mother’s family in Vietnam at age ten, he was educated in a Buddhist temple in preparation for becoming a monk. “I thought that was my calling long before I saw life through the viewfinder,” joSon recollects. “But the truth is, I have never left the monk-hood. I just left the temple.” Today joSon is a professional photographer based in San Francisco whose work is collected by an international list of clients. His work has appeared in magazines including Scientific American, Outside, Conde Nast Traveler and Vogue. He as won awards from Photo District News (PDN), Communication Arts, and American Illustration and American Photography (AI-AP). As Sunset Magazine described joSon’s first monograph, joSon: Intimate Portraits of Nature, from Graphis Press in 2013: "Had Richard Avedon taken up gardening, he might have ended up with photos like this.”