A few days ago I posted a this about a guy doing some sailing using a broad as his broadsail. Ropeguy over at the Bondage Blog picked it up because he'd run the same pic but was not aware where it came from. All I really knew was that it was the cover of a book called "Woman of Blood Island," but when I started getting visitors from his blog I thought I'd do some more research, and I came up with the artist's name: Col Cameron.
I also came across a lot of other illustrations by Cameron that are very bondage-licious and very tasty indeed. The guy definitely had a feel for damsel in distress art, and he had plenty of opportunity to express it, because he was "ekeing out a living" as one blogger put it, working for an Australian publisher called the Horwitz Company, which nowadays publishes children's books, gardening books, and glossy mainstream magazines like TV Soap, Inside Sports, as detailed in this blog.
However, in the 1960s and 70s, Horwitz mainly published lurid paperbacks with titles like "Victim of the SS," "Death Island," and "Satan's Captive." It was straight-up lurid sweat-mag stuff, not far from SM porn from the sound of it (haven't read any so can't really say) and Col Cameron illustrated a lot of the covers. What's more, many of them showed cuties in chains, ropes, straps and even (see above) the occasional gag. You can see a nice selection of his cover art here.
According to this blog, "Fall of the Roman Empire" is supposed to be the finest cover Cameron did for Horzwitz. I personally prefer "The Centurion" because the damsel is a lot nakeder and slinkier. But hey, it's a matter of taste I suppose.
