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From director Michael Ney comes word that photographer Noel Graydon died last week from heart failure.

Subject of the documentary, Liberty in Restraint, which played CineKink in both short (Best Documentary Short/CineKink 2004) and feature (CineKink 2005) versions, Noel had been a fixture of the Sydney fetish world for over a decade. For five years he trained and worked as a BDSM Master, aka “Master Venom,” and established the friendships which led him to genuinely photograph and capture this sometimes clandestine world.

Noel began his career as an assistant to a commercial photographer and assistant video cameraman in several video production companies. During this time he pursued freelance photojournalism with several newspapers and street press. As a photojournalist, Noel covered a variety of fields including humanities, Gen X and sexual lifestyle issues. His work was published in many magazines in Australia, as well as in the UK’s SkinTwo. He also spent time with Flesh magazine as their BDSM columnist and recently launched a series of podcasts documenting many aspects of the fetish world.

The funeral will be held Friday, July 13 in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife, Annette, and their two daughters, as well as his parents and sister.  Noel was 36.

Our very best thoughts to his family, friends and colleagues. Noel will surely be missed.