March 2019 Update: “Girls, Guns, and Ropes Photographs” appears to still be in print (surprisingly!). However, I haven’t seen it for sale in a hardback copy in awhile. Amazon has a paperback copy for a pretty reasonable price – if that’s your thing.
Girls, Guns, and Ropes Photographs by Josef Botello is a gorgeous black-and-white photography book. It was published in Germany under MixofPix publishing, and it’s a hardcover book with high-quality photo paper included inside of the book. There’s 160 pages with very little text (just an intro and epilogue). The front of the book displays a nude girl decked up in rope bondage with a gun to her mouth. (I will say this now. I know abso-freakin’-lutely nothing about guns, so I can’t ID them. I will henceforth refer to each gun as a gun instead of “gun with odd holes in it” or other completely irrelevant descriptors.) Her bare breasts aren’t covered, and it looks pretty obviously sexual, so I really wouldn’t recommend taking this out in public.
The book size itself is about the same as an average sized book (about the size of your average erotic book or pre-teen book. Just about an inch taller than my own outstretched hand.) The pictures themselves don’t actually take up the entire page, but it’s usually close to it (within about a 1/2 margin.) Sometimes there’s just the large picture, but other times, there’s actually multiple pictures on a page – up to four. All of the pictures are put onto a stark white background which constrasts nicely with the black and white photographs.
The girls themselves have some variety. From what it looks like, the photographer tended to use the same models – which is fine by me because they are attractive, but not plastic-looking girls. They look like the average girls who would enjoy showing off their bodies. Some of the girls had a little bit of weight on them, but it was only to the point of looking healthy not overweight. Most of the girls in the book do look quite healthy and not so skinny as most other photography books. The girls are attractive and seem to like being in the bondage, so I found it neat to look at.
So I know it’s called Girls, Guns, and Rope, but how does that all tie in? Well, for one, not everything is in every picture. (All pictures do have the girl though.) Sometimes there’s just rope, and sometimes there’s an addition of a “dangerous” object. Like a gun. Or a chainsaw (no joke!). Or a knife. The props are all used in a sexual way like a girl just “toying” with a gun or a knife poised to cut off a girl’s panties. Sometimes the rope is missing as well, and we are allowed to see the girl with the rope marks on her skin. (Which I think is sexy.) We even get to see chain used once in awhile.
Most of the rope bondage is done in a Western-looking style – not much Shibari or extra decoration thrown into the rope work. However, most of the rope work is still clean and attractive – Western doesn’t mean that it’s sloppy.
I will also say that, while most of the time the models are nude, they aren’t doing anything “distinctly” sexual. I say distinctly because if you are a fetishist, you might consider being flogged or kneeling down a doggy bowl something to make you aroused, but none of the girls are shown masturbating or doing anything like that. For the most part, it’s just pictures of the girls posing for the camera while tied up in interesting ties – sometimes they still have movement in their ties and other times, they are tied to stationary objects like spreader bars (or trees!).
So why would someone want to look at this? (You mean, besides hot girls in bondage. Which really is answer enough.) I picked it up to hopefully learn something new for rope bondage or to get some inspiration for some ties when flipping through the book. Plus, I enjoy BDSM photography, and there truly isn’t enough of the tasteful kind out there – Most of it is violent-looking. These just look gorgeously artistic.
So do I like it? Umm….hell yes? Seriously. I love it. Guns are sexy on a girl as well as rope bondage. Unlike most mainstream kink porn, this book portrays it in an art-sy way that doesn’t seem violent or nonconsensual. These girls are happy to be in the rope bondage and are obviously loving it.
