Look closely at Mosh, and you’ll notice something unusual about her. On these pages, you’ll see her balancing on her knees, bent double in a neat silhouette, or crossed-legged in a knot of limbs within a tiny pink space. It’s an athleticism you’ll see in all her shoots, whether she’s posing in perilously high black patent boots or leaning backwards down a flight of stairs. Her body looks natural, yet is often contorted in unfamiliar positions – in tune with its surroundings, yet at angles with them.

Like Mosh? We reckon you'll like Maureen Van Mortis too!

If life had been different, Mosh mighthave been somersaulting around the world as a professional gymnast. She was born in Russia to parents who were part of the national gymnastics team. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they moved to Florida in the United States to work as coaches, and later to Maryland. Making the journey when she was three years old, Mosh remembers little of her home. “I remember standing in line at five in the morning to get a carton of milk, but that’s about it. It was a joy...” she tails off, sarcastically. “At the time it was uncertain what the fate of Russia would be. So, my parents made a sacrifice for me. They packed up and left eveything they’d ever known in the hopes of giving me a more promising life”.

Make sure you never miss out on an issue of Bizarre - subscribe now!

The skill of being in touch with the body was something Mosh’s parents passed on to their young daughter. “I started professional gymnastics when I was five and I did it for 10 years,” she recalls. “Then I did acrobatics and dislocated my elbow and destroyed my right arm, so I had to stop. My parents are pretty amazing. They kept me safe all those years, then I went and got taught acrobatics by someone else and ruined my career! But I can’t say that I’m too sad. Had I not broken my elbow, who knows where I’d be now. I might not be modelling.”

Gymnastics’ loss is the alt scene’s gain. Like other Bizarre cover girls, such as career-minded model and Jane Doe Latex owner Nina Kate, or determined Torture Garden muse Viktoria, Mosh has achieved a great deal in a short space of time. The headstrong 19-year-old has carved out a niche, working with photographers such as Lithium Picnic, occupying the pages of Marquis magazine and working with designers such as Antiseptic. She also sounds wiser than her years, perhaps a consequence of moving country at a young age and socialising with older people. At the tender age of seven she joined a competitive cheerleading squad and was the youngest member.

“Everyone was older than me – late high school age or even early college age,” she says. “It was pretty fun being thrown about – all the guys would toss me up to the front. I was young, light and kind of short. Generally, I’d hang around with older people, but I’ve never tended to think of myself with regards to my age.”

When she was 14, Mosh visited Russia, and found it differed hugely to the American lifestyle she’d become used to. “It was fun if you wanted to go crazy, because there’s nothing to stop you!” she laughs. “I was partying, going to clubs. One day we’d go to a club, the next day there’d be a huge rave happening about 45 minutes outside of Moscow and there’d be thousands of people. The lack of police force was surprising. I tried to tone it down, though, and not go out every night. I made sure to get back in one piece.”

Footsteps into fetish

It was around this time of experimentation that Mosh first came across fetish images on the internet. She can’t remember what she was Googling for, or which photo she first saw, but the taut bodies and smooth latex lines made an indelible impression.

“I probably wasn’t supposed to look at them, but I did anyway,” she confesses. “I became fascinated with stuff from old Bizarre magazines, and work from Steve Diet Goedde, Lithium Picnic, Christine Kessler, Bob Carlos -– even David LaChappelle sometimes had fetish imagery in his work. I just fell in love with that. I felt the artists I was drawn to had something more in their images than just fetish. Either they were more erotic, more exotic… or just beautiful, and that’s what I strive for in my work.”

She kept her eyes on fetish pictures and forums, and started modelling when she was 17 after dropping out of a course in graphic design at her local college. She describes her first shoot as “boring”, because she was doing candid photos and portraiture. “My first shoot was in a park with a nice photographer – but I didn’t have my short hair, it was unstyled, and I didn’t have any wardrobe,” she remembers. “I soon learned that fetish was what I wanted to do”.

With that in mind, she worked with a friend who was studying photography and set up a profile on industry networking site Modelmayhem.com. During her first year, she stayed away from overtly sexual shoots, but ventured into some interesting locations in Maryland. One was an abandoned hospital with photographer Lynx Karma. All was going well until some kids broke into the building to spray graffiti, security alerted the police, and the secret shoot was discovered.

“The cops in Maryland can’t usually go into those places because of the high levels of asbestos in the air,” she explains. “They pointed a gun at our heads and told us to get out! When we were out, we got down on the floor and they asked us what the hell we were doing.” She pauses, and sounds contrite. “We were like, ‘we just wanted to take some pretty pictures!’”

But the “pretty pictures” were pretty edgy, with bondage overtones and a morbid slant. “We did one where we tied my hands up in one of the basement rooms,” she says. “And we did one by the morgue, and I had this hat on… wait, is the morgue where they keep the frozen bodies? Yes? Well, I posed right by the freezers!”

Work like a charm

Mosh’s pictures also show artistic flair. In one set, she’s shown innocently reclining in a bath full of milk and Lucky Charms cereal, her hair in child-like bunches and fingers reaching for her mouth. “It was a fun shoot, but kind of gross!” she says. “The water started getting cold and eventually I felt like I was sitting in a real bowl of milk. My skin started turning different colours because of the colouring of the marshmallows, so I came out looking blue, green and red!”

After her brush with the law, and dipping her toe into marshmallowed waters, Mosh’s thoughts turned to the more adult side of fetish. “I knew I definitely wanted to go into fetish, so I started doing the more crazy images,” she explains. “One of my main photographers, Vance, and I planned to go to a friend’s dungeon. She was a dom and had the room all set up, and we did some bondage and nudes – after a week I started doing everything I could possibly do.”

Just as the internet was her window to a world of fetish, it became her passport to getting inside. “I did a lot of networking on Modelmayhem.com. After I turned 18, work started coming to me – people I thought I’d never work with, like Lithium Picnic. About a year and a half later I flew to Texas and shot with him and Apnea. It was awesome!”

Twisted firestarter

Browse the web and you can see loads of images of Mosh, clad head to toe in red latex, with the wide eyes, slender body and platinum hair that’s become her trademark. She’s just moved toLos Angeles to further her modelling career. “Usually at 19,” she says, “people are at college, partying, wasting their lives away at something. Sometimes they can balance their life with partying or studying or working. I’ve always wanted to do something other than that.”

Her next career move is to launch her own paysite, Themoshroom.com, where subscribers will be able to see her latest images. It’ll also contain hair and make-up tutorials and news about what she’s up to. “It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking of for the past six months,” she says. “I hope people don’t get the wrong idea and think it’s some hardcore site – it’s justa lot of artistic and fetish images. I’m not into penetration or anything, so it’s all softcore.”

Mosh has also started designing a range of custom heels and has a few tricks up her sleeve for future work; last summer, she learnt to spin and eat fire. Despite feeling “terrified” at first, she’s already done a ‘fire transfer’ in Marylandfor clothing company Cadaver Rags, where she moved flames from a lit torch to an unlit torch by using only her tongue. “While the lit torch is in your mouth, because of all the saliva, you actually aren’t burning yourself like you would from a hot cup of coffee,” she says. “Your face actually feels hotter than your mouth.”

When Mosh isn’t modelling or playing with fire, she’s spending time with her boyfriend– Nick 13, the singer from psychobilly bandTiger Army. They met nine months ago after his manager approached her about making a music video for the band. It fell through, but the two discovered they had chemistry. “We kept hanging out after the director dropped the video,” she reveals coyly. “Currently he’s off tour so it’s OK. But I can’t tell you what it’ll be like after he goes on tour – I’m guessing I’ll probably get really lonely. Right now I’m just enjoying the time he’s here. I’m pretty lucky to have that.”

With a modelling career in LA and a rock star boyfriend before she’s hit her twenties, it’s clear Mosh is setting her sights high. “My ultimate ambition is to lead a well-lived life and complete all of my other non-ultimate ambitions within it,” she says. “There’s so much to experience – and I’ve only just begun!”