Before adult content went digital, disposable, and algorithm-driven, there were magazines like Bound & Gagged — glossy, deliberate, and unapologetically niche. Launched in the late 1970s, the magazine became a cornerstone of leather, bondage, and fetish publishing, documenting a subculture that valued ritual, power, trust, and visual precision long before it was widely understood or accepted.
Bound & Gagged mattered because it treated fetish not as shock value, but as identity. Its photography, layouts, and iconography were part of a broader leather press movement that gave people language, imagery, and community at a time when visibility was scarce and often dangerous. Like many magazines of its era, it circulated hand-to-hand, through mail order, specialty shops, and coded ads — creating connection long before online spaces existed.
