Exotic Dancers

“It’s pretty funny that we can make such large quantities of money just by walking around with our breasts showing. It’s almost silly. One of my lines, when a guy refuses to look me in the face but is staring directly at my chest, is to ask him if he was weaned too early, because he looks like a little baby!” -- Princess Cheyenne The project began in 1990 after an exotic dancer asked me for headshots and described her job as empowering, fun, and lucrative. This sparked my curiosity, and over the next four years I photographed women across New England, ages 21 to 34, who chose to dance topless. The first dancers I met embraced my project, introducing me to others and facilitating access to clubs and private events. They were students, mothers, and professionals using striptease to fund futures, raise children, and gain control over their time, bodies, and income. I photographed on high-speed black-and-white film with Nikon and Leica cameras, embracing the heavy grain and low light to capture the atmosphere as it looked and felt. I encountered a world where performance and perception shifted depending on where you stood. Onstage, the dancers commanded the room. Offstage, they moved through ordinary routines, laughter, fatigue, and care. The more time I spent with them, the more I realized their stories were as essential as the photographs. The project was recognized as a top finalist for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 1991 while it was still in its early stages. I continued photographing and, in 1993, began recording the women's voices so their words could live alongside the images. They invited me into both their working environments and private lives, and their voices shaped what I was able to see, transforming the project into a collaboration built on trust. This project later became the basis of my Harvard University master's thesis, and now continues to evolve into my forthcoming photobook, Stripped & Crowned: Through the Looking-Glass World of Exotic Dancers. Drawing on Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the book invites viewers into a world where accepted ideas about power, gender, identity, sexuality, and the gaze begin to shift. Like Alice, viewers cross into a world where familiar rules are subtly reversed and women occupy positions of unexpected power.