Gentlemen’s Club - First Session

I was in Toronto (where I grew up) for an advertising shoot and decided that I would use my free time to see if I could line up an actual sitter for something that I’d only talked about up to that point.

I visited a small strip club near where I was staying. I stepped up to the bar with a small collection of my photographs, hoping to leverage my best celebrity shoots for access to new subjects. I got chatting with an attractive brunette sitting on the stool beside me, talking simply and directly about my project idea. She quickly told me that she doesn’t have a boyfriend, seeming to want to end this conversation with someone who wasn’t going to be a customer, but I showed her the images on my iPad and she became engaged. “You know, one of the guys who works the door is dating one of the dancers. Do you want me to talk with him?”

Two days later, he became my first sitter: young, ponytailed, seemingly confident and at the same time weary and anxious, a wet stain blooming under the arm of his shirt sleeve like his emotions had taken physical form. I was grateful for the opening and pleased with the result—profoundly intimate, real, and yet strange and otherworldly.

Top Image: Pano, from “Gentlemen’s Club,” shot June 23, 2014, Toronto ON.

Second Image: BTS photo by Yael Young.

Bottom Image: Alternate frame of Pano.