Author(s): Cammie Toloui

PHOTOGRAPHY MONOGRAPHS | EROTICA

In the early 1990s, Cammie Toloui worked as a stripper in San Francisco to fund her photojournalism degree. Customers who paid to view her naked body and watch her perform sex acts on herself were offered a discount if they consented to being photographed. These images, published here for the first time, are free of any prejudice. Instead, they are imbued with a deep sense of curiosity and understanding, revealing a broad spectrum of sexuality, fetishes, and often private aspects of masculinity. Today, the series retains a deeply powerful urgency because of how she took control of and inverted the male gaze at a time when it was an overarching, dominant force in daily life.