This portfolio includes images exploring extreme sexual violence and torture. We thought very carefully about whether or not to include these last of Pichard’s illustrations; we are aware that if they were photographs rather than illustrations they would be illegal under most jurisdictions, but in MCPM Pichard wanted to show his readers that such extremes are possible and therefore must never be acted upon. We trust our audience to be able to judge for themselves, and to be able to consider carefully whether illustrating the usually-unthinkable is ever justified.

You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk …

Maison de correction Princesse Mélanie (MCPM) (The Princess Melanie House of Correction) was Pichard’s last completed work, and although it seemed impossible that his imagination could exceed the scenes already included in his earlier work, then Maison de correction proved his readers very much mistaken.

In this demonic women’s prison no method of torture is ruled out, from bondage, forced feeding and branding to a wide range of machinery designed to break, tear and humiliate. In the accompanying text to the forty illustrations, Pichard explains that he has imagined such scenes primarily because it is in imagining what can be done that we can be forced to think about what has been done to women in history. It also makes the reader consider the sometimes tenuous boundaries between consensual BDSM and the abuse of torture.