Elmer Batters was dubbed the Dean of Leg Art for his unique approach to photographing women’s legs and feet, but while his work brought solace to legions of foot fetishists, the courts called it dangerously perverse and hounded him his whole life. “I felt that people almost saw me as un-American for not mooning over large mammaries,” he said. Elmer Batters (1919 – 1997) served aboard a submarine in World War II where he became aware that his sexual tastes were different from his shipmates. Following his discharge he married his first leg model, settled in Rancho Palas Verdes, and made a career photographing women with an emphasis on legs and feet.
Featuring over 200 original works, an exhibition at Taschen Gallery in LA, showcases the work of Batters together with Eric Stanton. Curated by Dian Hanson and Benedikt Taschen, Bizarre Life – The Art of Elmer Batters & Eric Stanton brings these artists together for the first time, creating a forum to explore the origins of our current sexual autonomy while raising questions of power and dominance, sexual freedom and sexual repression, and examines their far reaching effects on contemporary art.
