In Conversation: Elizabeth Waterman Part 1
Elizabeth Waterman (c) End of the night, 2017.
A dancer in the Bronx celebrates a successful night of lapdances.
I’ve known and worked with portrait photographer Elizabeth Waterman since our early days in New York. Over the past 10 years I’ve watched her develop as an artist, and posed twice for her various projects. We spent a Saturday afternoon a few weeks back getting caught up on her latest series and soon-to-be book. She was at her home in Santa Monica, I was at my townhouse in Montreal; the hot topic was all things Dark Angels. Her latest is a collection of photographs spanning the last 4 years and going behind the scenes and onto the stages of America’s most notable strip clubs. Elizabeth did not hold back about the joys and the stress of gaining access to and documenting this subculture, and let me in on the sexy takeaways that result from spending so much time in a sex-fueled environment.
Her goal with this project is to create something that peers inside a world people haven't seen before and she knew getting access to the strip clubs and photographing these girls was going to be difficult. “It’s not a common thing to do. I started to learn it’s a really political atmosphere,” she tells me. “You are not just dealing with strippers, you’re in an environment with the men and women paying to be there; you have the staff and the management, you have the hosts and DJ and the owner, the house mom and the girls,” she pauses, “there are so many people involved in this pseudo ecosystem.”
The biggest thing to overcome? Navigating the ecosystem in a graceful and respectful way, without being a pushover and making sure you get what you came for in terms of the body of work. From what she tells me, it’s a delicate balance like no other project she’s taken on before.
Elizabeth Waterman (c) Charlie in VIP, 2017.
Charlie gives a private dance in the VIP section of a Bronx party club.
“You really have to be cognizant of everybody; they all have different considerations, they all have different concerns. The owner doesn't want you interfering with any of the money being made. The clients usually don't want their photo being taken, the house moms want the girls to be happy, the girls want to make money, and you have to make sure you’re not stepping on any of those interests and everyone is happy that you are there,” she tells me in a very serious tone. “You have to make sure strippers are getting photos for their own use too. I would bring donuts and coffee to the management, because none of them owe you a thing. I would give them little video clips and special content for their social media platforms.”
Her biggest challenge? “In the clubs I had to find a way to make it cool and sexy that I was there, while being totally non-threatening,” she recounts, and again it’s clear that she took this very seriously. “I’ve never had a project before with such a complex environment. I definitely fucked up sometimes. Once I was at a club and the owner thought I was an exposé journalist; she had decided that I was there writing some kind of terrible thing about strippers and I was there to expose them or something. She kicked me out.”
After 4 years in and out of strip clubs I had to ask, what makes a good stripper?
“Here is what makes a really good stripper: when you are sitting and watching a stripper on stage doing her show and you’re 20 or 50 feet away, and just from watching them you feel like you’re having sex with them. Because of how they are moving and acting and how they are positioning their bodies you literally have this experience of having sex with them. It’s like you’re having sex with them visually and when that happens it’s amazing,” she sounds in awe, “It is an amazing performance; a really good stripper can really evoke something.”
We started talking about the tricks and let me say, these tricks are not for kids. “These pole girls doing tricks will do things that will take your breath away. In Miami there are 30 foot poles and these girls will drop 20 feet, like bam! There is a pole in Vegas that is 100 feet and I saw a girl drop 50 feet (drop meaning like she lets go of the pole and then grabs it with her thighs 2 or 3 seconds later). It makes your heart jump. The girls in Miami, they are solid muscles. Mona Marie, one of my favorite girls in the Bronx is a slim little woman, but solid muscle. They are doing splits on the ceiling; they hang off of the pole with an elbow,” she explains.
Elizabeth Waterman (c) Into the blue, 2017.
A dancer does pole tricks at an all nude club on Hollywood Blvd in Los Angeles.
We have a laugh at the thought of naked Cirque du Soleil, but I can tell by her tone that it’s not really a laughing matter, these girls are true athletes. “Imagine doing that, no clothes, no protection, just heels. It’s incredible. You see them in the locker room sometimes scarfing down food because they are working, burning crazy calories. They get bruises, it’s no joke, it’s a full contact sport.”
There is no need to go into the negative stereotypes that have been cast upon the world of stripping and strippers; it’s needless to say, we’ve all heard one or two less-than-savoury things. I wanted to know, what misconceptions did Elizabeth have before beginning this project that were debunked for her?
“I’ve always thought strippers were cool, amazing and fabulous; I’ve had friends that were strippers so I never had a stereotypical view of them. I had concerns that they would like me. I thought they would be annoyed that I was there and might not want to pose for a photo and I was really touched and moved with how generous and nice they were.”
Elizabeth Waterman (c) Dollars everywhere, 2019.
A dancer in downtown Los Angeles performs a table dance on a Saturday night.
When it comes to society's misconceptions she tells me, “there are a million of them and probably none of them are true, some of them are based on something but it’s like any group of people doing a job; there is no common norm. Look at any industry, any job, there are things about it.”
Oftentimes people are so caught up in the fantasy they can forget that being a stripper is a job, and as Elizabeth says, “people forget there is no one kind of standard stripper. I know there are stereotypes, but they often don't fit. These are complex people and the strip clubs are really different around the country. There are a lot of different crowds of dancers working there.”
As a female who has spent my fair share of time in strip clubs where the target audience was predominantly male, I had to ask how did being a female photographer in this scenario, taking photographs of women, influence the body of her work? “Most of them had not encountered a female photographer in a club before. I don't know how a man could have gotten into my shoes on this one. I was not there to sexualize them; I wasn't shooting for the club, I was shooting just for myself, my artistic vision, which is one of elevating these amazing women into goddesses and basically worshiping them.”
For Elizabeth that changed the tone of the relationship. She tells me, “Honestly, I probably spent 80% of the project in the locker room; as a man, they wouldn't have let you in. The locker room was where everything happened; it’s where I met them, talked to them and then I would shoot the club performance. It was 90% talk beforehand and sometimes I would talk to them for several weeks before they would say yes and I could shoot them on the club floor. If I hadn't had that access to the locker room, I wouldn't have had a project.”