Fine Print: First dance. Presque Isle, Maine, 1973

From 1972 to 1975, Susan Meiselas spent her summers photographing and interviewing women who performed striptease for small town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. As she followed carnivals from town to town, she portrayed the dancers on stage and off, photographing their public performances as well as their private lives. She also taped interviews with the dancers, their boyfriends, the show managers, and paying customers.

A study of the role of women in society in the 1970s through the microcosm of the dying traveling ‘girl show’ industry, Meiselas’s Carnival Strippers brings to the fore differing views on women, sex, society, and class, exploring the sometimes hard-to-define line between independence and exploitation.

Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed

11 x 14 in / 28 x 36 cm

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