25/10/2009






Juliana Beasley

Juliana Beasley compiles images she took during her eight years as a stripper into a homage to dancers, their customers and admirers. She brilliantly peels aside the sex industry's seedy surface to show the tender, banal, profound and playful reality of trafficking in sexual fantasy.

"Dancing can be an identity fucker. I was lucky because I started dancing at 24, when I had my identity fully in place. Playing a part for 8 hours 4-6 nights a week, infiltrates every aspect of your life. I told customers that I was younger. I played the starving student or innocent little girl because you can really only play highly stereotyped roles as a stripper.
I always make comparisons between stripping and other professions because these analogies make it more accessible to people who might be curious about stripping but disinclined to take it seriously because of the stigma. I used to tell a boyfriend who didn't understand, that stripping was just being in a musical. Every night I played a stripper in a musical.
I started accepting people for who they were, then I started seeing that the customers were there for a reason and it wasn't only for sex. There was something they weren't able to access in the other parts of their lives. Truthfully, there were a lot of customers I respect and care about as people."

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