Harmony Concepts, Inc.

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Harmony Concepts, Inc. (Harmony) is a privately owned BDSM magazine and film production company created and maintained by publisher Robert Q. Harmon[1].

Harmony Concepts films hired many of successful later BDSM producers and performers including Simone Devon, Danni Ashe, Darla Crane [2], Julie Simone and many other notable performers and photographers of this genre in some of their earliest starring film roles. It has been stated that Harmony was in part responsible to helping establish these producers' success as one of the original employer and marketeer for these producers.

[edit] Magazines and Periodicals

As a publisher of bondage magazines, Harmony created several notable productions that showed a several different styles promoting the BDSM lifestyle as a consentual choice rather than the stereotypical pain inflection understanding of BDSM. Harmony's magazine format ran opposite to many of the notable detective magazines of the 1970s and 1980s whereby the covers of these detective magazines featured bondage pictures of women being tied and gagged on their covers prior to their suggested resulting murder scenarios such as the notable magazine covers such as "True Detective (Rees Communications)" and Inside-Detective [3] for this time period.

Harmony's editorial policy specialised in what they described as "love bondage" whereby the partners featured were depicted mostly in willing submission scenarios.

Notably, "Bondage Life" contained large amounts of reader feedback, and imagery and artwork contributed by readers. "Bondage Life" can be regarded as an influential publication in the movement of BDSM towards the mainstream.

Some of Harmony's longest-running titles include:

Beautiful Bondage Scenes (1980 - 1993)
Bondage Adventures (1988 - 2001)
Bondage Fantasies (1990 - 1998)
Bondage Gallery (1986 - 1990)
Bondage Life (1977 - 2001)
Bondage Parade (1979 - 2001)
Bondage Photo Treasures (1981 - 1990)
Buxom Bondagettes (1990 - 1997)
Custom Bondages of Simone Devon (1987 - 1991)
Fetishette (1994 - 2000)
Love Bondage Gallery (1986 - 2001)
Love Bondage Scenes (1990 - 2000)
Love Bondage Treasures (1989 - 2001)
Simone Devon's Favorite Bondage Models (1987 - 1991)
Simone Devon's Tight Love Bondage (1991 - 1995)

[edit] Films

As a film production company Harmony is credited alongside California Star Productions (Calstar) and HOM with establishing the BDSM film market revival of the early 1980s, producing over a hundred titles that included many stars who would later go on to become notable producers in their own rights later.

These films were mostly based on the noted damsel-in-distress formats popularized in many different early films including the "Perils of Pauline" serials.

The formats were later expanded to include some of the more hard edge formats, popularised in television crime dramas where the stories included onscreen imprisonment, abusive attacks and forced sufferage. But the lighter fetish topics that defined Harmony were maintained in their films such as tickling and shoe (foot) worshipping.

Harnony continues to develop and release bondage film products, though has mostly discontinued publishing periodic magazines at this time.