Since the recession of the late aughts, the adult entertainment industry in Los Angeles has changed rapidly as the old ways of doing business became obsolete. I wanted to photograph people who were being disrupted by these changes, and chose to concentrate on those who work behind the scenes, and who are the unknown contributors to this unusual industry.
The main influence for this series was August Sander’s portraits of the various strata of German society in the early/mid 20th century. I wanted a classic look to the images, so used a Hasselblad square format camera with black and white film, and as I’ve photographed the portraits I’ve also made silver gelatin prints of them. So far, I’ve shot 30 portraits and want to shoot about another 30.
