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But Kroll, being one of the originals, occupies a curious place in the history of the erotic arts. For example, the headline of a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle profile aggressively proclaimed: "Kroll knows his work's explicit, so please don't call it porn." But no other "fetish photographer" -- and I use the term in quotes because it seems cheap, in some ways, to toss it out there so casually with regard to someone like Kroll -- so ably embodies the all-but-inexpressible chasm between erotica and pornography, that distinction being the lynchpin of a debate I have, in years past, publicly ridiculed. But that distinction is critical here, because in every sense Kroll's work is about obsession. At the risk of resorting to rhyming couplets: Pornography, too, with its cheaply-purchased money shots, is about obsession -- the kind of obsession that last thirty seconds or five minutes, maybe half an hour. Kroll's brand of obsession, for better or worse, reigns eternal. For Kroll, the relationship between art and life became more acute recently when he and his longtime partner and muse, Gwen, parted. I remember many a late night with Fetish Girls and Beauty Parade -- relaxing with my thoughts, and I mean it literally in this case -- when I understood, with almost agonizing clarity, the texture and touch of that obsession. Kroll sat down with Eros Zine to chat about life, love, fetish, art, and obsession. Eros Zine: It's been more than three years since Eros Zine last showcased your work -- too long! What have you been up to in '03, '04 and '05? Eric Kroll: Well. Gwen and I spilt, which changed my head, my heart and my work. I kept shooting in my apartment on Bush street. I felt paralyzed for a number of months. Then I began to get involved. Met a woman in Madrid and shot her. Met a woman in SF and shot. Met Helena and shot and shot, but it began to all change. [Benedikt] Taschen offered me a job as full time editor for his company and at age 59 I took the job. I'm here now in LA. I thought I wouldn't shoot, but there is a woman, and I am just beginning to shoot her after not shooting for four months. But its different. The light is different here, and the idea that my work and my pleasure were one is gone. Lived it for 40 years. I'm turning to study the work of Man Ray and others. A time for reflection.
Eric Kroll: I just finished a lengthy time obsessing or responding to Helena. She went back to college and I went south. This was one of the most open women I know. I would suggest something and she would see the integrity of the shot and do it. Then she decided to go back to school and off came the high heels and on came the flats and no longer was making these images interesting. I shoot young women because they don't have the career path that prevents them from spontaneously going on the road or to Europe or worried what a shot of herself in spike heels might do to her career. Eros Zine: You recently traveled to Milan and Venice -- where else have you traveled and worked? From much of your work, you obviously like working while travelling.... Eric Kroll: I like to get lost with a woman next to me. This past year I ran four different women thru Barstow, California, arriving at dawn after driving all night from San Francisco. We'd shot outside this blue motel with Route 66 signs, then get back in the car and drive for an hour east to this particular motel, and shoot the woman there in the shade of the motel room. Each room had a different orange painting in it. Different girl...different painting. The lifestyle reads really cool but in some ways its not. It's impermanent. The most beautiful women, I don't care about. It's the attitude. For instance, I turned around in a gallery on Santa Monica Boulevard and found Raven. I had a feeling about her and a month later I told her what I wanted to do with her and she smiled and said "how did you know I really like kinky things?" Instinctive. Of course, what the rest of the world thinks is "kinky" sounds normal to me. I remember my ex-wife, Lynka, saying that by now, what I think is normal sexuality is much too far out. Oh, well. Eros Zine: What would be your absolute fondest wish as far as what you could find in a model? Eric Kroll: Encouragement. I shot a beauty from Portland's Reed College and when I used the men's room at Albertson's and when I saw the baby changing platform and suggested she take off her clothes and put on this adult diaper she smiled, entered the men's room, got naked and loved doing the shot. Then the toilet shot then the...she had a lisp and she bit her nails. She was amazing. The photos are amazing and I never heard from her again. That is part of the world I travel in. one's self of self is at risk on all ends -- model and photographer.
Eric Kroll: The woman decides the direction -- I mean, her look and her personality. I am shooting less and less. I will shoot Raven tonight, in bed, or in the new living room or in the bathroom or asleep. I have this idea for a book, and it involves all the places I have lived and shot in. Eros Zine: You know, I almost never bother to pose this question, but with you it definitely seems worth the asking. In your opinion, what is the definition of a "fetish photograph"? Eric Kroll: A fetish photo directs the viewer to the photographer's obsession. That can be leather. Rubber, a woman's foot. Role playing. Face sitting. That is particularly interesting to me now. Whenever a relationship I care about ends, I feel powerless and there is a loss of direction until some "muse" comes along and lights me up again. I've been told by psychiatrists not to fuck my muse, but I never listen well. Eros Zine: Along those same lines, in a sense....I'm sure you get asked all the time about your influences within the world of erotic or fetish photography, and you've spoken before about influences from Man Ray and other surrealists. I'm curious what other types of art have influenced your work. Are there painters, photographers, or other influences from pop culture that your fans might be surprised to discover have influenced you -- maybe that you've never had the opportunity to mention? Eric Kroll: Man Ray and Duchamp stand out. Eric Stanton and John Willie remain. I study art. Its not a subject I studied formally. I am simply interested. I look at everything and borrow and steal from everything. There is a painter form the 1950s named Robert Wolfe who lived near Calder in Connnecticut I own some of his work and look at it every day -- and it is squares of color. I am not Ray and Charles Eames. I am currently obsessing on Alexey Brodovitch, the mid century art director that taught everyone from Hiro to Avedon. Eros Zine: If I was going to glibly summarize your work, I would call it "highly stylized but spontaneous, retro but modern, perverted but innocent." In your opinion, am I even close?
Eros Zine: I couldn't agree more. As a native Northern Californian and also a former Angeleno -- briefly -- talk of absurdity always brings my thoughts to Los Angeles. I understand that you recently moved to LA to work for the book publisher Taschen, right? Eric Kroll: Yes, I am involved in a new book series and it has nothing to do with sex. Eros Zine: Do you think moving to Los Angeles will affect your work in the long term? Are there any particular opportunities that living in Southern California gives you? Eric Kroll: There is definitely a warmer light -- but I miss being able to get to nature so easily in the [San Francisco] Bay Area. Eros Zine: For a total change of gears....do you ever get stalked? Eric Kroll: In a sense I might be stalked but I am more concerned about the jealous boyfriends. When I used to live in NYC in 1971-1994 I used to stop into the peep show booths in Times Square and jerk off and I had this sequence for a movie or reality where me or a character like me is in a booth jerking off and some jealous husband or girlfriend of a girl model or a boyfriend has been following me and shoots me through the door of the booth. Eros Zine: Which may be a freaky note to end on, but hey, this is a pretty freaky world we live in. Thanks for talking to us, Eric! Fans of Eric Kroll's work can enjoy his recent Eros Zine spread Birth of a Pony Girl, and can also join his site at erickroll.com and can purchase his many books online, including The Transformations of Gwen Volume 1 
and Volume
2,
Eric
Kroll's Fetish Girls,
Eric
Kroll's Beauty Parade,
Fetish
Girls III,
and many others.
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