Ideal women: do not touch

Bob Carlos Clarke was an obsessive man. Attention-seeking and depressive, he was notoriously intense in work, life and relationships. Despite being hailed as the British Helmut Newton, he continually doubted his own talent. Perhaps inevitably, he strolled out of The Priory clinic one morning in March 2006 and threw himself under a train. His pictures tell us something of all this turmoil. They fixate almost perversely on the eroticised female form, photographed either as fantasy sex object, unattainable goddess or intimidating man-eater - all dreamy curves and fetishistic PVC. Beautiful and sexy though they are, with wind-up mechanisms, remote controls and shark fins featuring heavily (see Adult Females Attack Without Provocation, 2004, above), they are also deeply troubling.