Japan has always had a humpback-whale sized soft spot for kitsch: Hello Kitty meets Star Wars figurines, Godzilla shower toys, and Gundam-themed cafes, for an example. We also know that they have strange sleeping habits: they seem to be able to fall into microsleep in microseconds standing up in sardine-packed trains, and with capsule hotel rooms going for just $30 a night, you can pretend you've been buried alive in a plastic coffin.
If we combine these two phenomena and multiply it with the sex industry, you get Nathalie Dauost's photography series Tokyo Love Hotel. Here, we can see the cultural combination of role play, oddly themed sleeping chambers, and obscurely dressed (and undressed) women come together. She took weeks prowling the various themed brothels in Japan's capital, snapping portraits of their inhabitants. And there are some odd fantasies indeed - is that a woman tied up on a picnic rug covered in jam?
Daoust is also known in the analouge industry for mucking around in the darkroom and accidentally-on-purpose discovering new methods for processing photographs. You can see some of the cool effects she gets in the below gallery, although it's a little NSFW. She sure must eat a lot of carrots.
More at daoustnathalie.com.