December 2011, Las Vegas
Looking for some old performers, I ended meeting some show girls. The way they looked down on strippers got me quickly intrigued and interested. Outcasts are my kind, they try harder. From strip joints to Burlesque theaters, I went on a quest and met the “Legends”, these dominating characters of the quintessential American art of strip tease. Hours of confidence on tapes, intimate photo sessions, they peel off and reveal the hidden layers of their life with throaty emotion. Their memories reflecting the memories of the land. Vietnam vets and bikers are their loyal patrons.
Candor and decadence, the art has seen his Golden Age, losing it to the sex industry, but its actors kept its luster vibrant. Of all ages, from sixty to ninety five, they don’t make the covers of glossy magazines. Seductive Queens of “effeuillage”, undressing but never bare, endangered species of femininity, they made it, to these pages.
Stripper. Ecdysiast, in high society. From Greek ecdysis: shedding of an outer layer of tegument, as do snakes, or insects. Natural act of transfiguration. What’s removed is no longer skin. It is pure artistic mutation under our eyes, for strippers seduction is a renewal of reality. Don’t be fooled. Each one of them is a real entrepreneur of the American Dream. They have conquered their flesh and their independence, their sex and their economy, and they have paid the price. Rise, fall, addictions, solitude, indigence, all the trimmings of life when there is nothing but life to live. They made it with humor and grace. This is what makes them the “Legends”.
Together we have played a scene or two of the film of their life and in these moments I could see the changing . As if in the making of all women are the intimate moves and rituals of seduction of the young girls we were. Moves we keep for life.
As I honor these artists I wish to honor my mother and her fierce mother, and the older woman I will be one day, when I reach the age when the receding flamboyance of flesh let through more of the original soul.
Aged bodies, aged trophies. Memories of adulation and erotic trances have a way to keep alive and transfigure with innocence in front of us these beautiful women.
Marie Baronnet
Biography
I studied photography and multimedia first at the University of Paris 8 and then at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris.
At first I worked photography as an art medium, showing in galleries, at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. A grant from les Beaux-Arts allowed me to study at Cal Arts (California Institute of Arts) in Los Angeles, photography and critical studies.
My personal territory is art and documentary photography. I also always mix medias such as video and sounds, portraits and voices.
To sustain myself and my projects I have been working on movie sets. Today as a set photographer. I am also working frequently for magazines such as: Sunday London Times, Newsweek, L’Equipe, Le Monde, Geo, Liberation, Cityzen K, City Life etc …
I am bi-continental photographer. Lately I have developed a series of investigative photo projects in America. Working on the Mexican American border as well as downtown Las Vegas and in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. I am also currently pursuing my series on the “Legends” that will be published as a book in late 2013.
