Inside a strip club
Inside a strip club
By: Morganna Magee
Each of these photos were taken when I talked my way into a strip club. I had planned on doing a club X project in which I would shoot the customers once the curtain went up on the peep show. Obviously this had no real hope of being realised so using a bouncer I knew who was working the door at one of the big showclubs, I marched on in and asked the manager if I could shoot the customers getting lapdances. Expecting him to kick me out he suggested instead of focusing on the customers - why didn't I just shoot backsatge?
I was accutely aware of how many times strippers had been photographed in a sympathetic way. I wanted to avoid this as I had no interest in who the girls were outside of work or what made them strip.
What interested me was the bizarreness of the backstage, the boredom the women often showed and the way it was so similar to many other jobs. When they were onstage they would put on this over-sexed acts but backstage they sat around eating dinner complaining about their boyfriends and laughing about how their tampons had fallen out during a private dance. The whole thing was so banal to them and I spent rolls and rolls of films trying to get shots where the girls weren't posing and pouting at me.
Sure some of them had sad stories like the girl with the tattoo that said “Dad”; who has the biggest speed addiction coupled with the saddest eyes I have ever seen, but then there were others like the girl with the Playboy tattoo who were complete attention seekers. A lot of these women really believed they were empowered, liberated and in complete control.
That's not my personal understanding of the profession but hey, each to her own.
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