“Shooting a dominatrix in a dungeon is about as exciting to me as taking corporate headshots in an office block,” says photographer Hannah Louise. In her new exhibition, A Body of Mirrors, she refuses to flatten the subject into the same predictable tropes. Instead, she drops fetishwear into locations you’d least expect: a sunny garden, a car park and heritage architecture. “There’s something so visually electrifying and sexy about that juxtaposition.”

Through photographing seven professional dominatrixes, Louise challenges the rigid archetype of a severe, feminine woman dressed as a secretary. She discovered that “pro dommes are world-builders, artists, healers and weirdos who facilitate incredible spaces for self-discovery, expansion and release”. They do not break character, denying the viewer the chance to fully know them. By capturing her subjects from below, snarling, or sitting on someone’s face, the photos assume the gaze of the submissive, preserving the  psychological dynamic which characterises BDSM. The power gaps and elements of ambiguity “invite projection, and projection is always revealing,” explains the show’s curator, Barbara Kaczmarczyk. “By resisting the fantasy of complete access, it perhaps makes the viewer aware of their own assumptions.”

This projection is precisely where A Body of Mirrors gets its name. “The submissive looks at the domme and finds their own reflection warped across her body,” says Kaczmarczyk. Latex is explored as a symbolic mirror. People come to dominatrixes with their fantasies, but rarely receive them back unchanged – the domme interprets them, redirects them and sometimes even turns them against the sub. “Similarly, latex reflects everything around it, but returns a distorted image.” 

A professional domme herself, Louise wields a camera with an insider perspective that intersects with her art. This allows her to go beyond “static fetish portraits” and capture the full scope of these characters. Existing within the same marginalised community as her subjects gives an immediate, unspoken baseline of understanding, Louise has found. “I know how it feels to be photographed by someone who just sees a ‘hot woman’ in an outfit, versus through the eyes of someone who truly shares your vision of beauty and power.” Kaczmarczyk, also a pro domme, adds that their practice as dominatrixes enabled them to skip the usual routine of defending or explaining sex workers, and to author their own narratives. “I could take all that as given and treat our work as a cultural practice, rather than a social problem,” they say.

From the brothels in Fanny Hill to season three of Euphoria, stories about sex workers are overwhelmingly told by outsiders – meanwhile, digital platforms shadowban actual sex workers. The iconography, too, is lifted by the fashion industry – once the reserve of fetishwear shops, latex and body stockings saturate the runways, while Pleaser-style stripper heels are worn far from any pole. “Mainstream culture mines sex worker aesthetics,” says Louise. “Yet the marginalised people responsible for giving those garments their edge and cultural capital face intense stigma.” In this era of stifling censorship on the one hand and appropriation on the other, A Body of Mirrors, and the ethos of self-authored representation at its core, is an important intervention.

A Body of Mirrors runs at Stuck (32–36 Tottenham Road, London N1 4WD) until 19 August 2026.