WHere are lists of some notable people associated with BDSM, arranged by field of activity. Some are in more than one category.
WVanessa Blue is an American pornographic actress and director. She was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2013.
WWill Clark is an American gay pornographic film actor. He is a member of the Grabby Awards Hall of Fame and has received a special citation from the GayVN Awards for his fundraising work in support of HIV/AIDS charities.
WHannah Cullwick was a diarist who revealed less-known aspects of the relations between Victorian servants and their masters.
WVan Darkholme, also known by the nickname VAN-sama, is a Vietnamese-American dungeon master, performance artist and film director, as well as a photographer. Being of Vietnamese descent, he is among the few Asian American men working in Western gay porn as a director and actor. Darkholme is interested in men.
WThe Genitorturers are an industrial metal band from the United States, with influences extending into the 1990s hardcore punk and electronic music. They proclaim themselves to be "The World's Sexiest Rock Band".
WSeiu Ito , also romanised as Seiyu Itoh was a Japanese painter, recognised today as "the father of modern kinbaku". Ito's life was the subject of director Noboru Tanaka's 1977 Nikkatsu Roman porno film Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture!, the final entry in his "Showa Era trilogy".
WIrving Klaw, self-named the "Pin-up King", was an influential American merchant of sexploitation, fetish, and Hollywood glamour pin-up photographs and films. Like his predecessor, Charles Guyette, who was also a merchant of fetish-themed photographs, Klaw was not a photographer, but a merchandiser of fetish art imagery and films. His great contribution to the world was to commission fetish art and sponsor illustrative artists, and to indirectly promote the legacy of Charles Guyette and John Willie. Irving Klaw is a central figure in what fetish art historian Richard Pérez Seves has designated as the "Bizarre Underground," the pre-1970 fetish art years.
WMichael Manning is an American comic book artist and writer, fine art illustrator, and traditionally trained animator currently based in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his graphic novel series, The Spider Garden and Tranceptor, which combine elements of pan-sexual fetishism and BDSM culture with complex characters in science fiction and fantasy settings. He is also active in the supernatural horror and fantasy genres, drawing adaptations of the work of authors such as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alexandre Dumas for the Graphic Classics comics anthology series, as well as illustrating an anachronistic version of the German folk epic, The Nibelungen.
WRobert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the homosexual male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.
WKen Marcus is an American photographer, known for his glamour photography with Penthouse and Playboy magazines. For over 30 years he has produced hundreds of centerfolds, editorials, album covers, and advertisements. His work is shown in galleries, published in books and magazines. He was an artist-in-resident at the Yosemite National Park Museum. Marcus also lectures and conducts workshops internationally. He has an adult fetish and BDSM site.
WRoland Loomis, known professionally as Fakir Musafar, was an American performance artist considered to be one of the founders of the modern primitive movement.
WBetty Mae Page, known professionally as Bettie Page, was an American model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. Often referred to as the "Queen of Pinups", her shoulder-to-armpit-length jet-black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs have influenced artists for generations. "I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," said Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to the Associated Press in 2008.
WThis is a list of notable photographers in the field of BDSM. For other notable people associated with BDSM, see List of people associated with BDSM.
WDamon Pierce, creator and owner of slavetobondage.com, is a world renowned bondage rigger, BDSM educator, professional piercer, adult entertainment producer and director from Los Angeles, California. He is known for his skill with well known companies such as Penthouse, Hustler, INSEX/Intersec, KINK, Hustler's Taboo, Andrew Blake, PlayboyTV, Adam and Eve, Bonview, and Bizarre Video. Damon Pierce has worked with well known photographers like Ed Fox, Steve Diet Goedde, Eric Minh Swenson, Dave Naz and Ken Marcus.
WMeghan Elizabeth Wren, known professionally as Amber Rayne, was an American pornographic actress.
WDylan Ryan is an American pornographic actress.
WAndreas Spengler is a German psychiatrist and researcher who conducted through 1974 and 1975 a well-known sociological study on sadomasochism in men at the Institute for Sexual Research in the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.
WEric Stanton was an American underground cartoonist and fetish art pioneer.
WSamuel Morris Steward, also known as Phil Andros, Phil Sparrow, and many other pseudonyms, was a poet, novelist, and university professor who left the world of academia to become a tattoo artist and pornographer.
WJean-Thomas "Tomi" Ungerer was an Alsatian artist and writer. He published over 140 books ranging from children's books to adult works and from the fantastic to the autobiographical. He was known for sharp social satire and witty aphorisms. Ungerer is also famous as a cartoonist and designer of political posters and film posters.
WJames Mark Ward is an American body piercer. In a 2004 documentary, entitled The Social History of Piercing, MTV called him "the granddaddy of the modern body piercing movement."