Veteran fetish photographer Eric Kroll submitted the following remembrance piece to AVN on colleague Christine Kessler, who died late last week:
I could get this wrong. The only person who could verify these things I write is dead. Christine Kessler took her own life last week. There are not enough safety nets and she took a leap and there was nothing there to catch her.
I realize I’ve been asked by Chris to write the facts but there weren’t a great deal of facts after her last break-up. Like the photographer Roy Pinney, she quit taking photographs after he and she broke up.
I remember Christine in her kitchen cooking turkey dinner for a small bunch of fetish misfits, me included. I remember being at the Bordello for a performance and I was hanging outside and there was an unrecognizable giantess covered COMPLETELY in rubber from head to toe framed by streaming rubber ribbon to boot. I went to snap her and the face under the face mask laughed and said, “Hi, Eric.” It was Christine.
There are many interesting bathrooms in Los Angeles but hers after a “shoot” or after a night in rubber was fantastic. She, unlike most fetishists, knew how to preserve her rubber wear and there it was, hanging out to dry.
I just came from the memorial funeral for the great glamour photographer Bunny Yeager and I spoke about how she got from her models something that no male photographer could get. I realized the models looked happy and relaxed in a way men photographers in the '50s and '60s were unable to achieve.
Christine Kessler elicited the same. I remember Stoya’s pussy peeking out from between her legs where she sat on the floor for Christine and I remember Stoya’s other smile.
Bunny made the outfits her models wore. Christine did her models' websites like Emily Marilyn and Masuimi Max.
But she lost her lust for photography and STOPPED. No more website maintenance for herself (MyFetishDiary.com) or others. No more photos. No more turkey dinners.
After I left L.A., I wrote the introduction to her Nylon Girls (Goliath) which meant a lot of phone time with her, which I liked. We could bitch about the fetish scene but then as time added on her thoughts and feelings got darker and I knew from Dave Naz and others in the L.A. photo scene that she stopped coming around. The last time we spoke she said she did not see anyone. Even so, we agreed to go out next time I was free in L.A. and for over a year things got in the way—the terrible passing of photographer Carlos Batts, the Independent Salon across the street from the Paris Photo L.A. where I hung out with Naz, Steve Diet Goedde, Victor Lightworship, Ed Fox and Bob Adler in Eric Swenson and Lisa Derrick’s booth. She should have been in that show but she had left that world ... and then left the world entirely.
Pictured: Eric Kroll, courtesy of his Facebook page; Darenzia Elizabeth (l) and Christine Kessler (r), courtesy of Elizabeth's Twitter feed.
