Waves breaking at Killiney Beach, Co Dublin, Ireland on Sunday, October 20, 2024. (Photo by Stephen Collins/Collins Photos)

People see in the new year at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 1, 2024. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

The underbelly of fetish parties has been exposed in photographs captured by Belgian photographer MagLau. The photographer dedicated three years to capturing the obsession with leather and chains, visiting fetish parties through Europe and Japan. The photographer told: “I just took pictures, always finding some beauty in the dark side”. He said that most people were happy to be photographed for the project, with the images included in a new book Fetish Ballad. Aiming to capture the candid moments, he said he never judged but instead wanted to simply observe and understand. Here: Picture from Fetish Ballad book. (Photo by MagLau/Laurent Muschel)

In this file photo taken on Sunday, August 2, 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, candidate for the presidential elections greets people waving old Belarus flags during a meeting to show her support, in Brest, 326 km (203,7 miles) southwest of Minsk, Belarus. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko faces a perfect storm as he seeks a sixth term in the election held Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020 after 26 years in office. Mounting public discontent over the worsening economy and his government’s bungled handling of the coronavirus pandemic has fueled the largest opposition rallies since the Soviet collapse. (Photo by Sergei Grits/AP Photo)

A woman looks at cows on the Mare e Sol beach in Coti-Chiavari, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, on May 17, 2017. A herd of some thirty wild cattle take up their summer residence on stretch of beach each year. (Photo by Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP Photo)

A supporter of former US President Donald Trump waits outside of Trump's President Day event at the Hilton Palm Beach Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on February 20, 2023. (Photo by Giorgio Viera/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian man walks on the beach, as storm winds blow, near a camp for internally displaced on the beach near the Nuseirat refugee in the central Gaza Strip on December 20, 2024, amid the continuing war between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Eyad Baba/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian man plays with a horse at the beach of the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday October 1, 2021. The beach is one of the few open public spaces in this densely populated city. (Photo by Hatem Moussa/AP Photo)