Cammie Toloui
The Lusty Lady
Jul 3 - 27, 2024
I've always been drawn to the forbidden - and to revealing what is forbidden. When I worked as an erotic dancer in the early 90s at San Francisco’s famed Lusty Lady Theatre, I decided to photograph the men and women who came to watch me strip.
Working in the sex industry - where money and male power meet - offered me a fascinating look behind patriarchy’s curtain. I worked in the private peep show booth, separated by glass from my customers who paid five dollars for every three minutes to watch me undress, pretend to masturbate and act out their fantasies. I became as fascinated by my customers as they were by me.
At the time, I was a student working towards a degree in photojournalism and was already devoted to documenting subcultures and taboo subjects, so it was a natural step to bring my camera into the peep show booth with me. I wasn’t sure anyone would let me take their picture during such a private exchange, but I quickly discovered that some people will do anything for attention, especially if you offer them a discount.
Holding my camera, I found power and agency in this act of inverting the male gaze. Over the next couple of years, I was driven to document this radical shift in the balance of power and so uncover a hidden world at the convergence of capitalism and the patriarchy.
Their money bought them the right to look at me: the camera in my hand empowered me to look back at them.
Cammie Toloui (Iranian-American, b. 1968, she/her) is a first-generation Iranian-American queer artist born and raised in California. She holds a degree in photojournalism from San Francisco State University, where she also taught photography.
Her work as a documentary photographer has taken her to Russia, where she photographed punks and biker gangs; England, where she documented life on the streets of London; and in America, where she shot inside ambulances, strip clubs and other public/private worlds. She delights in exploring and exposing taboos, finding humor in unexpected juxtapositions and discovering a subject’s unguarded truth.
Her work has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. Internationally, her work has been shown at Tate Modern in London, Galerie Shmorévaz in Paris and most recently as part of the Biennale della Fotografia Femminile in Italy.
Early in her career she won the New York Times Award for Excellence in Photojournalism. Her book $5 for 3 Minutes (published in 2021 by Void) was shortlisted in the 2022 Rencontres d'Arles Book Award and in 2024, Cammie was delighted to win the Fotobus Library Award for Best Photobook of the Year.