Leathermen occupy a curious place in culture. Present everywhere from the Village People to bleeding-edge Berlin raves, from Police Academy films to Alexander Skarsgård going to town on Dudley from Harry Potter’s face for A24, the leathermen are a long-standing symbol of gay masculinity, both familiar and niche. But who are today’s leathermen when the outfits are peeled off? And what does it mean to submit yourself to the tribe?

In her project Celtic Leathermen, Welsh photographer Ocean Elani documents leather-clad guys hanging out in the post-industrial areas of the Welsh Valleys, Cardiff, and Glasgow.

We spoke to Ocean to find out more about the project.

VICE: Hi Ocean. So, why leathermen?
Ocean Elani: I’m interested in communities that are visually distinctive but often misunderstood. The leather community is normally reduced to fetish and sexuality, but I think there’s a much bigger story in the identity, resilience, and belonging of being a part of a community like the leathermen. Rather than just photographing them in a sexual way, I wanted to show the people behind the culture in its own terms.

Leather culture stems from post-World War II servicemen, right?
Yeah, it sort of came from this idea of people in the [gay] community wanting to appear hyper-masculine. So they looked at what military and industrial workers and biker communities were wearing and adapted it in their own way.

From a photography standpoint, how hard was it to find these guys and get their buy-in?
It wasn’t hard at all. There’s this wonderful gay club in Cardiff called Golden Cross. It’s like the oldest gay bar in Wales. I got in contact with a fella called Rhys over Instagram, and basically said, “Hey, I think you guys look really fun. Can I come to the next leather social?” They hold one every month and basically just have a good old time. And I came along and met loads of lovely people, and it just stemmed from there.

Why Wales and Scotland?
I chose Scotland and Wales because of the deep industrial histories and traditions, like working-class solidarity. The landscapes are very shaped by labor and heavy industry—docks and quarries and mines and stuff like that—so I wanted to make a dialog between both.

What was behind your framing of the subjects within these settings?
I wanted to create a contrast by taking these men in their leather outfits and putting them into places where it wouldn’t necessarily look natural for them to be. That’s when I got the idea of making the link between industrial heritage and the leather community, and about how the leather community has had to be quite underground—like mining in Wales, which was also underground.

Right.
It wasn’t like, “I’m going to take a picture of you in this way in this place.” It was a conversation between me and the different people that I photographed to come up with something together. People letting me into their homes was very special because it’s quite a vulnerable place to be, especially to be photographed. So I think that’s why I shot in those different places, and also in the clubs and on the leather nights. 

Was there anything else you learned?
It’s obvious that there are sexual elements to it, but it’s not just about sex and fetish. It’s also about community. You could be a complete stranger and go to one of these leather nights, and everyone will accept you and let you be a part of it. Because it’s so hypermasculine, you’d think that maybe there could be a toxicity to it, but it’s one of the loveliest communities I’ve ever submerged myself into.

That would be a nice way of ending it. But I did have another question. You can’t really walk around dressed like that, right? Just in general. I mean, not at Pride events, but like in life. Or can you? 
You definitely can. A man I met in Glasgow, Rod—we really formed a lovely friendship, and he’s very devoted to wearing his leather outfits in most of everyday life. Obviously there are people with government jobs or whatever and they’ll wear it just for the meets, but you also find people like Rod, who wear it quite often in their everyday lives. 

Follow Ocean Elani on Instagram @oceanelani.photos

Follow Nick Thompson on Instagram @niche_t_