The DS Life: Leg Show
The DS Life is a new weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at gmail dot com.
This week's gam-filled shot comes from "Asianleggy," a professional photographer whose collections you might already be familiar with, depending on how deviant your tastes are. Step past the post break for the full image and some notes on his previous work.
Throw on Nintendo's logo and a few lines of copy, and this shot could pass as a print advertisement for the handheld in a modish magazine. Glancing away from her DS Lite for just a moment, the woman on the left appears comfortable with the system's unconventional control scheme, maybe even enjoying it. The other female -- seemingly younger with her sandals, Adidas hat, and nearby MP3 player -- is completely engrossed with her game, ignoring her companion and the photographer. Their similar outfits, pink tops with blue miniskirts, suggest that the two could be sisters, or mother and daughter.
The most curious detail about the above image, though, is the company it keeps. As Asianleggy's (AL) moniker suggests, his expertise lies in taking photos that accentuate the legs and figures of East Asian models. AL's subjects range from sensually posed business women to handcuffed and gagged maidens, all of them artfully captured no matter the tone. One photograph from his "Women in Bondage" set shows a languid brunette dressed in a stewardess uniform, tied up and abandoned on the beach. Eyes closed, she makes no effort to escape the rising tide as it crashes against her bare legs.
Other photos are more provocative, like his image of a young girl straddling a street railing. The hem of her undersized outfit is helpless to guard her exposed unmentionables. The emphasis of that particular composition leaves no room for debate. On the other end of the spectrum, in one of AL's more subtle scenes, a woman in a black-and-white-patterned wrap dress leans against a concrete wall for support, raising a leg behind her to examine the heel of her shoe.
Put into this context, the perceived story behind the Nintendo DS image changes. Who are the models, really? Were they just passing the time with a round of Brain Age when the picture was taken, waiting around for a less-innocent shoot to begin? And how does one go from taking photos of bound, half-naked damsels in distress to capturing shots of women engaged in something as harmless as playing with their DS Lites?
