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All-Weather Celtic Leathermen

Photographer Ocean Elani documents leather daddy communities in post-industrial Wales and Scotland.

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Leathermen occupy a curious place in culture. Present everywhere from the Village People to bleeding-edge Berlin raves, from Police Academy films to Alexander Skarsgård going to town on Dudley from Harry Potter’s face for A24, the leathermen are a long-standing symbol of gay masculinity, both familiar and niche. But who are today’s leathermen when the outfits are peeled off? And what does it mean to submit yourself to the tribe?

In her project Celtic Leathermen, Welsh photographer Ocean Elani documents leather-clad guys hanging out in the post-industrial areas of the Welsh Valleys, Cardiff, and Glasgow.

We spoke to Ocean to find out more about the project.

VICE: Hi Ocean. So, why leathermen?Ocean Elani: I’m interested in communities that are visually distinctive but often misunderstood. The leather community is normally reduced to fetish and sexuality, but I think there’s a much bigger story in the identity, resilience, and belonging of being a part of a community like the leathermen. Rather than just photographing them in a sexual way, I wanted to........

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