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Pandora's Box

First commissioned to accompany the Nick Broomfield documentary "Fetishes", Meiselas's "Pandora's Box" is a darkly captivating journey into a high-class sex club that specializes in sado-masochism.

The images, featuring a New York S&M club, are from Meisela's 2001 book of the same title. Through this series Meiselas portrays the sadomasochistic experience, in this Disneyland of domination, as beautiful, unnerving, and ultimately, self-reflexive.

The rich diversity of Meiselas’ imagery immediately infuses her project with a cinematic quality that ensnares the viewer in a world of fantasy. Windowless, draped in velvety blues and lascivious reds, white surgical tile and, of course, leather, Meiselas’ camera captures a self-enclosed world of probing visual seduction, an approach which effectively drives the viewer’s desire. The contrast between images depicting individuals engaged in socially repressed activities such as punishment, whipping and humiliation, and more relaxed imagery of dominatrixes smoking and preparing for the encounter, directs the viewer to perceive Meiselas’ subjects as multifarious personalities. One becomes acutely aware of the dichotomy in the relationship between the looker—the viewer—and the looked at—those depicted in the photographs. This relay awakens us to the casual sadism of vision, and illustrates much more than the workings of an S & M club. Rather, it demonstrates several levels of objectification: the objectification of the masochist by the dominatrix, and the reverse, as well as the objectification of both by the viewer, who stands safely distanced from the implied sexual act.

This relationship is itself directly referenced in an image featuring a client watching a TV screen. His identity remains obscure to us, blocked by the room’s door through which we are forced to peer. Legs and a single hand are visible and reveal two important signifiers of this person’s identity: his masculine attire—what we presume to be a suit—and a white, limp, hand. Though we do not learn who this individual is, he exists as an allegory of the white male gaze, a subject which has preoccupied photographers and artists for decades, but is so rarely illustrated with such visual and conceptual clarity and tenacity. As the viewer, we identify with this individual. The camera, like his T.V. or the dominatrix’s whip, is our tool of domination.