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Carnival Strippers
From 1972 to 1975, Susan Meiselas spent her summers photographing and interviewing women who performed striptease for smalltown carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. As she followed the girl shows 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. Meiselas' frank description of the lives of these women brought a hidden world to public attention. Produced during the early years of the women's movement, Carnival Strippers reflects the struggle for identity and self-esteem that characterized a complex era of change. This revised edition contains a new selection of Meiselas' black-and-white photographs together with the original interview excerpts. Additionally, an audio CD featuring a collage of participants' voices and a 1977 interview with the photographer are included. Essays by Sylvia Wolf and Deirdre English reflect on the importance of this body of work within the history of photography and the history of feminism.
164 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1976
About the author
Susan Meiselas
45 books9 followersSusan Meiselas is a documentary photographer based in New York. She is the author of Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Pandora’s Box (2001), Encounters with the Dani (2003) Prince Street Girls (2016), A Room Of Their Own (2017), Tar Beach (2020), and Carnival Strippers Revisited (2022).
Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). Most recently, she received the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles (2019), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), and the Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography (2022). Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present was initiated by the Jeu de Paume in Paris and traveled to Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, among others.
Meiselas has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). Most recently, she received the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles (2019), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), and the Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography (2022). Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present was initiated by the Jeu de Paume in Paris and traveled to Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, among others.
Meiselas has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 27, 2026
Carnival Strippers
"Carnival Strippers" is a photographic documentary of the carnival strip shows that flourished in county fairs in small-town New England through the late 1970s. The book consists of photographs of the strippers, the managers, callers, and barkers who run the shows, and their customers, or "marks".
The book first appeared in 1976 and his long been out-of-print. The photographer, Susan Meiselas, was at the time a young woman just out of graduate school. She spent the summers of 1972 -- 1975 following the carnivals and in getting to know the women to photograph them and their environs. She at first offered her photographs and interviews to various feminist publications who turned them down.
Meiselas subsequently went on to a distinguished career as a documentary photographer working extensively in Central America and Kurdistan. In 1992, Meiselas was named a MacArthur fellow.
"Carnival Strippers" received attention upon its initial publication for its frank, but nonjudgmental portrayal of its tawdry subject. The book was made into two plays before it, like the carnival strip shows themselves, disappeared from attention. Then, in 2000, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City featured a retrospective of the photographs. The Whitney Museum published this second edition of "Carnival Strippers" in 2003 with Sylvia Wolf, curator of photography at the Museum contributing an essay. Deidre English of the Graduate School of Photojournalism at the University of California at Berkeley has also written an essay for the book.
In the 2003 edition, 16 new photographs are added from Meiselas's source materials and 13 photographs that appeared in the 1976 edition are deleted, making a total of 76 photographs in the book. The new edition is also rearranged from the initial text. There are two sections of photographs, the first called "the girl show" and the second called "portraits". The essays by Wolf and English draw parallels between Meiselas's work and the work of Brassi's 1930 photos of Paris prostitutes, as well as with the work of contemporary photographers such as Diane Arbus. To me the strongest parallel is Belloq's collection of photographs of prostitutes in Storyville, New Orleans dating from the turn of the century.
In the grainy black-and-white photographs of the life of the carnival strip shows, we meet the women and the barkers on the front stage called a "bally" enticing the men to enter the show. For a price of $2 or $3, the show consisted of four or five women each dancing naked to, generally, a single 45 rpm record. The book shows photos of the girls at work to crowds of leering men. The world of the "girl shows" was competitive and nasty.... We see the girls off-stage in dressing rooms and in private moments reflecting on their lives. There are extensive interviews with the strippers, the managers and barkers and the patrons. The book also comes with a CD featuring the sounds of the strip shows, interviews with the girls, and a 1997 interview with Susan Meiselas.
The book paints the picture of a low, tawdry life with mutual exploitation between the girls, their managers, and the patrons. Yet it is a way of life not without its fascination. It is a life of poor, mostly ignorant, and exploited women, but also a life based upon the rejection of convention and upon attempts to attain independence. Meiselas clearly became taken with the strippers, their attempt at independence, their eccentricities, their vulnerability, and their vulgarity. For Meiselas and her subjects, Carnival life is something that gets in the person, making it hard to leave when one has been exposed. I found the life of these now gone carnivals and girl shows got inside me as well in reading this book.
The women in this book are not beautiful, air-brushed models and the book has little to offer in the way of titillation. Meiselas tries to show the viewer and the reader the carnival life for what it was. The book shows a dark corner of the eternal theme of sexuality and love between men and women in all its difficulty and ambiguity.
Robin Friedman
Note: The above review, written in 2003, is of the 2003 edition of "Carnival Strippers". A new edition of Meiselas' book "Carnival Strippers Revisited" was published in May 2022 which consists of the original 1976 work plus commentary. I haven't yet seen the new volume but thought this 2003 review of Meiselas' book and project stands on its own. Robin Friedman, July 8, 2022.
"Carnival Strippers" is a photographic documentary of the carnival strip shows that flourished in county fairs in small-town New England through the late 1970s. The book consists of photographs of the strippers, the managers, callers, and barkers who run the shows, and their customers, or "marks".
The book first appeared in 1976 and his long been out-of-print. The photographer, Susan Meiselas, was at the time a young woman just out of graduate school. She spent the summers of 1972 -- 1975 following the carnivals and in getting to know the women to photograph them and their environs. She at first offered her photographs and interviews to various feminist publications who turned them down.
Meiselas subsequently went on to a distinguished career as a documentary photographer working extensively in Central America and Kurdistan. In 1992, Meiselas was named a MacArthur fellow.
"Carnival Strippers" received attention upon its initial publication for its frank, but nonjudgmental portrayal of its tawdry subject. The book was made into two plays before it, like the carnival strip shows themselves, disappeared from attention. Then, in 2000, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City featured a retrospective of the photographs. The Whitney Museum published this second edition of "Carnival Strippers" in 2003 with Sylvia Wolf, curator of photography at the Museum contributing an essay. Deidre English of the Graduate School of Photojournalism at the University of California at Berkeley has also written an essay for the book.
In the 2003 edition, 16 new photographs are added from Meiselas's source materials and 13 photographs that appeared in the 1976 edition are deleted, making a total of 76 photographs in the book. The new edition is also rearranged from the initial text. There are two sections of photographs, the first called "the girl show" and the second called "portraits". The essays by Wolf and English draw parallels between Meiselas's work and the work of Brassi's 1930 photos of Paris prostitutes, as well as with the work of contemporary photographers such as Diane Arbus. To me the strongest parallel is Belloq's collection of photographs of prostitutes in Storyville, New Orleans dating from the turn of the century.
In the grainy black-and-white photographs of the life of the carnival strip shows, we meet the women and the barkers on the front stage called a "bally" enticing the men to enter the show. For a price of $2 or $3, the show consisted of four or five women each dancing naked to, generally, a single 45 rpm record. The book shows photos of the girls at work to crowds of leering men. The world of the "girl shows" was competitive and nasty.... We see the girls off-stage in dressing rooms and in private moments reflecting on their lives. There are extensive interviews with the strippers, the managers and barkers and the patrons. The book also comes with a CD featuring the sounds of the strip shows, interviews with the girls, and a 1997 interview with Susan Meiselas.
The book paints the picture of a low, tawdry life with mutual exploitation between the girls, their managers, and the patrons. Yet it is a way of life not without its fascination. It is a life of poor, mostly ignorant, and exploited women, but also a life based upon the rejection of convention and upon attempts to attain independence. Meiselas clearly became taken with the strippers, their attempt at independence, their eccentricities, their vulnerability, and their vulgarity. For Meiselas and her subjects, Carnival life is something that gets in the person, making it hard to leave when one has been exposed. I found the life of these now gone carnivals and girl shows got inside me as well in reading this book.
The women in this book are not beautiful, air-brushed models and the book has little to offer in the way of titillation. Meiselas tries to show the viewer and the reader the carnival life for what it was. The book shows a dark corner of the eternal theme of sexuality and love between men and women in all its difficulty and ambiguity.
Robin Friedman
Note: The above review, written in 2003, is of the 2003 edition of "Carnival Strippers". A new edition of Meiselas' book "Carnival Strippers Revisited" was published in May 2022 which consists of the original 1976 work plus commentary. I haven't yet seen the new volume but thought this 2003 review of Meiselas' book and project stands on its own. Robin Friedman, July 8, 2022.
September 20, 2019
I read a review on the BBC website about an exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles festival which featured the photographs from this book. The brief description of the work interested me, so I managed to track down an old, crumbling copy through interlibrary loan. It is a fascinating, and often sad read about a time long ago before internet porn was free and plentiful, and the girlie show at the summer carnival was one of the places that rural men who wanted to look at naked women could indulge this desire. The stories of the women and men ("carnies") that work the shows are told in their own words. Sometimes, those stories are what you would expect, sometimes not: for people from hard upbringings or bad relationships with nowhere else to go, the carnival is a place to earn a living and find a sense of belonging. Women who were never given love or attention by their parents get that "love" and attention from the baying crowd, and feel empowered by the lust they inspire. Some of the strippers see the carnival as a launching pad for a lucrative show business career; others hope to find a man who will love and take care of them, a man that they can raise children with. Some of the women will do anything on stage to feel accepted, or because "this was their career, this was what they did, and they did it very well." A quote from one of the men working the show sums it up: "There's one overall quality which I seem to notice among all the girls...The girls are what I call usable. They're unable to defend themselves and a strong man or woman can take such ridiculous unfair advantage of them." A powerful, moving work.
April 18, 2022
Judge this book by the cover.
May 4, 2009
Susan Meiselas traveled three years photographing and interviewing
the dancers, talkers, and managers working the small carnival girl shows. These crude and rude shows were known as cooch shows. Before Hooters and the local titty bars popped up at your local strip mall (sorry) these shows populated the back-end of many carnival midways. The cooch shows are now gone and have been for many years but before
their demise, Susan did a marvelous job documenting them. Warning...
this work gives the reader an intimate insiders look at sex-for-sale
on the midway.
the dancers, talkers, and managers working the small carnival girl shows. These crude and rude shows were known as cooch shows. Before Hooters and the local titty bars popped up at your local strip mall (sorry) these shows populated the back-end of many carnival midways. The cooch shows are now gone and have been for many years but before
their demise, Susan did a marvelous job documenting them. Warning...
this work gives the reader an intimate insiders look at sex-for-sale
on the midway.
February 4, 2008
We looked through this book at a bookstore recently, and it was really fantastic. The imagery is amazing, especially for us, since we'd never really been exposed to carnivals and circuses (the equivalent for us were circuses at hockey stadiums and carnivals put together by local churches). I'd love to go back and read all the details again, if I can get my hands on another copy.
February 25, 2024
fascinating portraiture of 'seedy' America that I didn't know existed. power, inequity, sexuality-- are all explored through these vivid and sometimes shocking photos
March 12, 2014
Occasionally heartbreaking often brilliant photographs and text document an odd corner, since disappeared, of the commercial sex trade. Susan Meiselas is a real artist--while she describes and illustrates a tawdry world she never loses focus on the humanity of the people she chronicles, including barkers, show managers and paying customers as well as the dancers.
May 22, 2010
Meiselas' gritty black & white photographs and candid interviews document a small group of carnival strippers from 1972 to 1975...book includes a CD featuring Meiselaa interview + sounds of the carnival talkers and a few strippers. Compelling.
December 17, 2007
A (A ref book in the library--should def reread! Abt these strippers and more that are in a traveling carnival)
Read
January 25, 2008This is a strange and rollicking foray into the lost darkness of the rural canival sex trade, accompanied by a recording of ambient sounds and interviews.
May 30, 2008
Compelling photo essay of a lost world.
August 12, 2012
Fascinating collection of photos and interviews with people who work in a carnival stripshow, from the strippers themselves to the barkers. Beautiful black and white photography by Susan Meiselas.
September 1, 2013
this is completely fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews