Forbidden Photographs
Documentary (90 or 52 min.)

Forbidden Photographs takes viewers on an eye-opening journey through extreme subcultures and their fascinating rites and rituals, with award-winning San Francisco photographer and anthropologist Charles Gatewood leading the way. We follow Gatewood, who has spent the past 40 years observing, documenting, and authoring books about the underground scene, from wild Manhattan S&M parties to the infamous San Francisco Folsom Street Fair. We also explore the secret world of outlaw bikers, fetishists, pagans, vampires, BDSM practitioners and enthusiasts of radical body modification.

Forbidden Photographs puts the intense subject matter in historical perspective, revealing how extreme piercing, unusual fetish practices, and blatant exhibitionism have entered and transformed mainstream culture. Gatewood's pioneering work explodes on the screen. Images from his books Sidetripping, Primitives, Badlands, and True Blood clearly illustrate why Gatewood is considered the world's premiere chronicler of bizarre humans and their extreme behavior.

"Gatewood...is on intimate terms with subcultures most of us haven't imagined in our kinkiest dreams."- San Francisco Chronicle

"(Gatewood) is the chronicler of an American underground from garden variety sadomasochists to practitioners of a radical form of surgical body modification that resemble refugees from a distant planet."- New York Times