Carnival Strippers - Susan Meiselas

The Girl Show

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Carnival Strippers

New England, 1972-1975.

From 1972 to 1975, I spent my summers photographing and interviewing women who performed striptease for small town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. As I followed the girl shows from town to town, I photographed the dancers' public performances as well as their private lives. I also taped interviews with the dancers, their boyfriends, the show managers, and paying customers.

-S.M.

Woodstock, Vermont, 1973

Variant for "Team Dream," Woodstock, Vermont, 1973

Notes on fair schedule for Carnival Strippers, 1973

The women I met ranged in age from seventeen to thirty-five. Most had left small towns, seeking mobility, money and something different from what was prescribed or proscribed by their lives that the carnival allowed them to leave. They were runaways, girlfriends of carnies, club dancers, both transient and professional.

They worked out of a traveling box, a truck that unfolded to form two stages, one opening to the public carnival grounds, another concealed under a tent for a private audience. A dressing room stands between them. Again and again, throughout the day and night, the woman performers moved from the front stage, with its bally call—the talker's spiel that entices the crowd—to the stage, where they each perform for the duration of a 45 pop record.

(From Carnival Strippers book, 1976)

Competing for clients, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1975.

Lulu and Debbie, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1974

Playing strong, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1975

Notes on Lena, date unknown

Patty's Show, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1974

Alternate for "Lena" or "Tom with Lena on the Bally Box," Barton, Vermont, 1974

Ready for the last show, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973

Ideas for sound recordings, 1973

Contact sheet of dressing room, Fryeburg, Maine, 1975

Between Shows, Fryeburg, Maine, 1975

The all-male audience typically included farmers, bankers, fathers, and sons, but "no ladies and no babies." The degree of suggestion on the front stage and participation on the back stage under the tent varied greatly from town to town, depending on legislation and local leniency. The show stayed at each spot for three to five days each year; then the carnival was torn down, the truck packed up, and the women followed.

(From Carnival Strippers book, 1976)

Notes on Men, date unknown

The Wives, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1974

Curtain call, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973

Shortie and Larry getting ready, Showhegan, Maine, 1973

Lena's notes on her audio transcription, 1975

The Bally Call, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1974

Before the show, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1974

Gawker, Tunbridge, Vermont, 1974

Notes, date unknown

Shortie in the Bally, Barton, Vermont, 1974

“Backstage or on stage, before show and after, Meiselas handles the charged material with the precision of computing a complex equation, mindful of mystification and deprivation but never letting either take charge, always focusing on the person who animates the idea.”

—Buffalo Evening News, June 4, 1975 by Anthony Bannon