Years before piercings and tattoos became so ubiquitous, I first noticed them among people in the fetish scene. An image that stuck in my mind was of a gold chain hanging between the D-rings of a woman’s pierced nipples. It led me to wonder what else could be hung from such piercings. Over time I tried several things, including washing lines, toy birdcages and trays.
Ten years after first encountering piercings I was shooting for a fashion magazine when the idea of attaching helium balloons to them first came to me. It was not that easy finding someone to pose for this one shot, because I soon found out not many women who had pierced nipples actually had both pierced. It was normally only one and usually the right one for some reason.
When deciding what colour to use, the remembrance of a film I saw once as a 10 year old boy, called The Red Balloon, came back to me. It is a classic film about a boy who finds a magical balloon that follows him around the streets of Paris. This is why most of the pictures feature a red balloon. As with a lot of my series i have just shot them then realised later that I have a theme going. It also occurred to me to try piercings other than the breasts as well.