Elmer Batters

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Book cover for "Elmer Batters: Legs That Dance to Elmer's Tune"

Elmer Batters (1919-1997) was a pioneer fetish photographer who specialized in capturing artful images of women with an emphasis on stockings, legs, and feet. He was a brilliant artist with an eye for the exotic. He was ahead of his time in popularizing foot-fetish imagery as erotic entertainment.

Batters started out publishing his photographs himself, and since the late 1960s his work has been featured in magazines such as Leg-O-Rama, Nylon Doubletake, and Black Silk Stockings, to name but a few. He paved the way for such critically acclaimed modern foot-fetish photographers as Ed Fox and Johnny Jaan. Several foot-fetish web sites (Ex., Foot Fair.com) continue Batters' pioneering photographic style through the use of classic visuals referred to by foot fetishists as "Feet-and-Face" and "the Pose" images.

As a foot-fetish pioneer starting in the 1950s, Batters helped make this formerly closeted field of sexual interest more acceptable, even fashionable, among today's hip, well-educated alternative lifestyles set.

Near the end of his life, Batters was rediscovered by German publisher Benedict Taschen and "Playboy" magazine. His work was also repackaged for Baby Boom fetishists during the 1990s by editor Diane Hanson in a monthly photo reprint feature appearing in "Leg Show", ironically one of the men's magazines Batters founded. Today, original photographic prints by Batters fetch hundreds of dollars among fetish-art collectors.

Batters' military career is mentioned briefly in the out-of-print nonfiction book "The Lonely Sky" by test pilot William Bridgeman. This book tells the story of the U.S. Navy's experimental Skyrocket supersonic plane program of the 1950s.

Taschen has published several books featuring the work of Elmer Batters.