Exotic Dancers

The photographs and interviews for the upcoming book, Stripped & Crowned were made between 1990 and 1994. The project began after an exotic dancer approached me for headshots and, during the session, described her work as a fun, lucrative, and empowering way to make money. That conversation sparked my curiosity and led to a four-year photographic journey into the world of exotic dancers across Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. In clubs, behind dressing room curtains, and in their private lives, I moved between neon-lit stages and the quieter spaces behind them, photographing women between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-four who chose to dance topless. They were students, mothers, and professionals using striptease to fund futures, raise children, and assert control over their time, bodies, and money. What I encountered was a world where performance and perception shifted depending on where you stood. On stage, the dancers held attention with ease. Off stage, the same women moved through ordinary routines, laughter, fatigue, and care. In 1993, I began recording their voices on tape rather than relying only on written notes, so their words could sit more directly alongside the images. The dancers allowed me into their working environments and their private lives, and their voices shaped what I was able to see. It was a collaboration made possible by trust and openness. Moments of performance, control, and exchange inside the clubs sit alongside quieter fragments of daily life beyond them, including backstage conversations, shared humor, dressing rooms, dorm rooms, kitchens, and time with children, family, and friends.