I was accutely aware of how many times strippers had been photographed in a sympathetic way. I wanted to avoid this as I had no interest in who the girls were outside of work or what made them strip. What interested me was the bizarreness of the backstage, the boredom the women often showed and the way it was so similar to many other jobs. When they were onstage they would put on this over-sexed acts but backstage they sat around eating dinner complaining about their boyfriends and laughing about how their tampons had fallen out during a private dance. The whole thing was so banal to them and I spent rolls and rolls of films trying to get shots where the girls weren't posing and pouting at me.

Sure some of them had sad stories like the girl with the tattoo that said "Dad" who has an amphetamine addiction coupled with the saddest eyes I have ever seen, but then there were others like the girl with the Playboy tattoo who were complete attention seekers. A lot of these women really felt they were empowered, liberated and in complete control.

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