Wire report
A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photograph
‘Karen is a Japanese dominatrix and “rope artist” who ties up her clients in a way that echoes how samurai would bind their prisoners. Her clients are mostly men with high-pressure jobs’ Ten years ago, my dad called to say he had found these amazing images hidden under piles of maps and stuff in an attic in our family home in Piemonte, northern Italy. He had come across a leather-bound album of 53 black and white photographs: portraits of Japanese “native types”, reflecting the 19th-century colonial way of representing people, cultures and views of Japan. It turned out we had a treasure in our hands: it was an album of photographs by Felice Beato , the first foreign photographer to arrive in Japan in 1863 at the end of the Edo period and on the eve of the Meiji era. Continue reading...
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‘Karen is a Japanese dominatrix and “rope artist” who ties up her clients in a way that echoes how samurai would bind their prisoners. Her clients are mostly men with high-pressure jobs’ Ten years ago, my dad called to say he had found these amazing images hidden under piles of maps and stuff in an attic in our family home in Piemonte, northern Italy. He had come across a leather-bound album of 53 black and white photographs: portraits of Japanese “native types”, reflecting the 19th-century colonial way of representing people, cultures and views of Japan. It turned out we had a treasure in our hands: it was an album of photographs by Felice Beato , the first foreign photographer to arrive in Japan in 1863 at the end of the Edo period and on the eve of the Meiji era. Continue reading...
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What happened
According to The Guardian’s source item, A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photograph, ‘Karen is a Japanese dominatrix and “rope artist” who ties up her clients in a way that echoes how samurai would bind their prisoners. Her clients are mostly men with high-pressure jobs’ Ten years ago, my dad called to say he had found these amazing images hidden under piles of maps and stuff in an attic in our family home in Piemonte, northern Italy. He had come across a leather-bound album of 53 black and white photographs: portraits of Japanese “native types”, reflecting the 19th-century colonial way of representing people, cultures and views of Japan. It turned out we had a treasure in our hands: it was an album of photographs by Felice Beato , the first foreign photographer to arrive in Japan in 1863 at the end of the Edo period and on the eve of the Meiji era. Continue reading…
Context
The development sits in VINI’s Culture file for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-10-14T13:39:13+00:00.
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Source
Primary source: A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photograph via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.
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- A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photographThe Guardian - 2026-10-14T13:39:13+00:00
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