I first saw “Une Semaine de Bonté” (A Week of Kindness) by Max Ernst when I was fifteen years old and I remember it made a deep impression on me. There are really only a handful of pictures with any real bondage references, but the ladies’ gowns and dresses fascinated me, such as the high-collared dress of the lady in the second picture (what would it be like to wear something like that!)

The book, which was published in 1934, is really a series of collage images cut up from pictures in Victorian magazines and encyclopedias, and although it’s billed as a novel, there’s no real storyline to follow. But I looked at it many times and always felt it conveyed a real sense of dread and a glimpse of the id unmasked, as though without our shaky civilization what savages we would all be. As a fifteen year old I only wished it had even more gowns and dresses and bondage but it was always fascinating to flip through its pages.