A professional voyeur, I’ve documented many subcultures: drag, club, carnival… lots of nightlife. I’ve developed my photographic style in the field, skating along the periphery of other people’s moments.
After a decade in the business, though, I felt a growing need to be somehow more personally involved in the process . . . to risk, to face my own unopened doors. For years, I was hesitant to explore the world of strippers and other sex workers but mesmerized by it all the same – the garish parade of flesh, the dark undertow of vice, the seamy basements of the city. I needed to find a way in.
I scoured the city for a strip club where I could take pictures. I was willing to mop up at the end of the night, I told the owners; I would even dance. For months I had no success, but in July 2016, I finally discovered a place in Queens where the manager gave me the go-ahead . . . no mopping or stripping necessary.
It took me a while to find my footing. Black walls and sticky floors. Groping eyes. Clawing sexuality. Boozy undertones. The girls stepping out to smoke blunts in the alley. I felt the cold ripples of their suspicion; no one quite understood what I was doing there. The DJ teased me, calling me “Blondie.” I was the only white girl in sight.
But I went in week after week. I brought doughnuts. I helped to collect the dollar bills littering the stage. And the dancers began to warm to me. I showed them my work, and they liked how I saw them. Soon they were volunteering to pose on the pole.
I was astonished by the ferocity of their athleticism. The first time I saw a dancer drop twenty feet down the pole and land in the splits, I know I gasped aloud.
I struck up conversations with the girls in the changing room and invited them to come sit for portraits at my Bushwick studio. Elsa was a newcomer to the trade, trying to work up a war chest to launch her singing career. Sunshine, from Queens, in her thirties, was supporting three kids. Nylah fairly sparkled with youth; she was chipping away at her college loans and fighting her way up. They shared a bristly sense of conviction and a disdain for the system.
After a year and a half, I started spending more time on the West Coast and found a distinctly LA version of the scene, featuring porn stars stripping on the side, aspiring actresses trying to make ends meet, and students finishing up their Master’s degrees. I have since photographed at clubs in Las Vegas, Miami, and New Orleans.
I have found much to admire in the girls, much to be inspired by. And in ways I’m still sorting out, I know I’ve been changed by the experience. I know I’ve taken on some of their audacity.
Dark Angels will be published as a book in late 2021.
Elizabeth Waterman, 2020
Based in Los Angeles, Ms. Waterman is a portrait and fine art photographer. She studied photography at the University of Southern California, and her work has been acclaimed by the Prix de la Photographie and the 16th Annual Smithsonian Photo Contest. She has shown in group exhibitions, including State of the World at Espace Beaurepaire in Paris, curated by Hossein Farmani (2018), and The New Vintage at the Jue Lan Club/Limelight Church in New York City (2016), and she was the featured artist in The New God, at Wallplay in New York (2013).
Ms. Waterman’s images have been published in The Eye of Photography, Ms. Magazine, Beautiful Savage, The Huffington Post, Index Hungary, and the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity. Currently finishing up her Dark Angels project, to be published at the end of 2021, she has also begun a new series of adult performer portraits.
