Don’t need to introduce Erwin Olaf, he’s personally one of my favorite photographer, also the ‘Paradise The Club‘ series is from 2001, I just stumbled on it only a while ago and felt that the series was very now.
The Paradise Portraits series sees Erwin Olaf experimenting with intimate studies of the human face. Beautiful woman offset humorless or grinning, freakily made-up clowns, expressions with such energy you can almost hear their cackles.

The works are intense and beautiful, yet teeter between horror and decadence; Olaf manages to vividly captures the spirit of contemporary life through these works.

Erwin Olaf’s Paradise Club is featured here along with two portraits from the sister series Paradise Portraits. Conceived in the wake of a large-scale performance on the theme of the circus, these tableaux vivants attack the eye and the mind, teetering between horror and decadence. This bad trip remains unresolved in the faces of the characters portrayed, remaining with them as a morning-after flashback.

Never has coulrophobia been realized so perfectly than with this glossy, sinister, saturated clown bondage-fest.

Thanks for the mesmerizing photographs, Olaf, and the imminent sleepless nights.