I have known Stormy Leather for more than 15 years. That entire time she has been a professional naked person, and I have been a naked person documentarian, and somehow in all that time we had never done a proper nude photoshoot. That’s not to say I haven’t taken her photo naked. Stormy was a regular burlesque performer at Trash, my favorite party in NYC for many years, and I have photographed her on stage, backstage and everywhere else, but I am not sure I have seen her a single time outside of a nightclub or a post club diner at 4:30am.
That all changed recently. I have spent the last year or two updating a party photo throwback Instagram account called VintageDBB and I have reconnected with a ton of my old nightlife friends in the process. Since I have one million photos of Stormy, she was of course one of them. Back in September I was in New York, scrolling through Instagram, and I saw this photo of Stormy. She was nude on her bed, with almost no makeup on, and I just loved it. I think one of the reasons I didn’t photograph Stormy back then, is because burlesque is so over the top I never really think to photograph burlesque performers. I am always trying to capture something that feels real, and burlesque is a fantasy, it’s the opposite of that. But this photo of Stormy felt real and vulnerable and I messaged her about taking photos for old times sake and she was down, but there was a catch.
Stormy lives a very fancy life and she was staying out on Fire Island, so if I wanted to take her photo I had to head out there. On the plus side, if I did make it all the way out there, I would have a pretty phenomenal location to photograph her in. I was in. Somehow in the two decades I lived in NYC I had never been to Fire Island and honestly I now regret it. That place is incredible. It feels like a movie set or something, just with more naked gay dudes. It’s honestly the first time I have been upset I was straight. Seems like paradise if you happen to be a wealthy gay New Yorker.
Anyway, I spent the next few hours basically hanging out by the pool and petting Stormy’s dogs. It was pretty great. The only bad thing was that it was so bright out that the shadows were so harsh and she was squinting even in sunglasses. I wish I had brought a flash because a daylight flash would have helped a ton, but I didn’t think I was gonna need one when I left for NY. Still, Stormy is such a babe and the scenery was so good, that I don’t think anyone is going to care that I am an unprepared, mediocre photographer who sucks at PhotoShop. Damn, let me live.
After we shot outside for a while we went back to Stormy’s bed so I could basically rip off a photo that she had already taken. I am glad I did because those are by far my favorite shots of the day, the 35mm ones came out even better. They also happen to be the only safe for work shots we shot, which is why there aren’t any pool photos below. You are gonna have to subscribe to Girls of DBB for those. Sorry!
This post is too long already, and I am headed to DC for Thanksgiving tomorrow and I got a ton of stuff to do before I leave, so I will let you go, but I do have a bit of an update for those of you who made it this far. A couple of days ago I had a meeting with a web designer who is going to be redoing this site. It hasn’t had a real update since 2008, and is barely functional, as you know. With Bitcoin spiking I finally sold some of the stuff that I bought in 2017 and am going to use the money to pay for the redesign. I feel like this site is basically a vanity project at this point since no one reads blogs anymore, but it’s gonna make stuff so much better around here and I can’t wait.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s go look at some photos.
Click here to see all the NSFW photos of Stormy Leather on Fire Island!
