Elmer Albert Batters (November 24, 1919 – June 25, 1997) was a pioneer fetish photographer who specialized in artful images of women with emphasis on stockings, legs, and feet. He helped drag foot fetishism out of the closet and into commercial erotic print decades before internet galleries made leg and nylon content ubiquitous. For foot fetish and bondage-adjacent collectors, Batters is foundational: mid-century leg art with a clear, unashamed erotic eye.
Navy Years and Early Life
Batters was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He enlisted in the United States Navy on December 27, 1941, from Los Angeles. Service included the submarine tender USS Sperry (AS-12) (May–September 1942), the submarine USS Silversides (SS-236) (September 1942–April 1943), and USS Sunfish (SS-281) (April 1943–April 1944). He reached the rank of Yeoman 1st Class. His military career is mentioned briefly in the out-of-print nonfiction book The Lonely Sky by test pilot William Bridgeman, which covers the Navy’s experimental Skyrocket supersonic plane program of the 1950s.
Leg-Art Magazines and Commercial Career
Batters began by publishing his own photographs. In 1956 he founded and published Man’s Favorite Pastime, often cited as the first dedicated leg-art magazine. From the early 1960s his work appeared in titles such as Sheer Delight, Black Silk Stockings, Leg-O-Rama, Nylon Doubletake, and Tip Top. He paved the way for later critically noted foot-fetish photographers including Ed Fox and Johnny Jaan. Starting in the 1950s as a specialist, he helped make a formerly closeted field of sexual interest more publicly acceptable as erotic entertainment—stockinged feet, high arches, and hose as the main event rather than an accident of pin-up framing.
Caruschka: Favorite Model and Fan Magnet
One of Batters’ favorite fetish models was a Rubenesque woman named Caruschka. Little is known about her life outside the photographs, but Batters and his readers were smitten. Several shoots show her on a garden swing in classic foot-fetish “Andalusian-fan” poses, displaying high arches and well-formed calves. Batters wrote that no girl in the history of his leg-art business had attracted so many admirers. He acknowledged she was heavier than contemporary fashion ideals, then insisted charisma, eyes, eyebrow, and “that provocative smirk” were what hooked men—plus “a beautiful set of full shapely legs, firm and thrusting tits, and delicate, high-arch feet.” He claimed she loved men masturbating over her and was a deliberate tease. Those lines matter for fetish history: Batters sold desire for a fuller body and foot-forward posing decades before “body positivity” marketing language existed, and he named the masturbatory contract between model and consumer without euphemism.
Taschen Revival, Leg Show, and Collectors’ Market
Near the end of his life Batters was rediscovered by German publisher Benedikt Taschen, who produced books of his work including From the Tip of the Toes to the Top of the Hose and Legs That Dance to Elmer’s Tune (Taschen, 1998; ISBN 3-8228-8188-0). Taschen’s circle had encountered Batters through Leg Show magazine, where editor Dian Hanson introduced a new generation of fetishists to his photos in the 1980s and 1990s. Today original photographic prints can fetch up to about $1,500 among fetish-art collectors. Taschen continues to keep Batters in print as part of its erotic photography catalog.
Why Foot Fetish Culture Still Cites Him
Batters sits at the hinge between mid-century underground leg magazines and the later glossy fetish revival. If you care about stocking and sole photography as a kink lineage—not only as fashion stills—his name belongs next to the models, magazine editors, and later photographers who made feet a primary erotic subject. Related: foot fetishism, nylon and stocking fetish media, and the commercial history of specialized erotic magazines. His archive is less “bondage hardware catalog” than pure limb worship, but it feeds the same adult visual economy that stocks dungeon bookshelves and pay-site galleries.
