Credit: Dangerous Minds / These Americans

The Internet has a fair selection of vintage images of strippers and burlesque dancers from the 1940s, the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and so on. Many are strangely orphaned, like most of the kazillions of images out there. Just think, every day there are more images merely uploaded than all of the pictures produced during the 19th century. That’s kind of staggering. Most of these pictures drift unanchored to any connecting narrative.

All of which reminds me of the old Hans Christian Andersen story ‘The Shadow’, which I’m sure you all know or have at least been told at some point in your childhood. Simply put, it’s the story of a man whose shadow escapes one night and starts living a life of its own. This shadow becomes more and more independent until it is the dominant figure and its original creator, the man himself, becomes utterly subservient.

Old photographs are like that. They have their own life, which becomes the shadow by which we recognise or identify the subject’s life. Like these photos of strippers, taken from magazine spreads and publicity shots used to promote some gentertainment. We know little about the women who posed for them—or the lives they lived—but we identify them by their shadow, which in this case is the photograph.

In a similar way, dancers put on a show that’s only meant to entertain, which, sadly, some dumb men think is real. As the legendary stripper Toni Elling once said, it’s all about entertainment: “The idea is to suggest what’s there, not throw off all your clothes and reveal everything. That’s why they call it strip-tease.”

There’s something haunting about these women and the world they came from—cracked mirror glamour under the glow of red neon, all cigarette smoke and powder puffs. The audiences came and went, leering and liquored up, but the women stayed. Or at least their photographs did. Frozen mid-wink, mid-peel, mid-performance for crowds that probably can’t remember a single name. Most of these dancers were more than just the tease – they were comedians, gymnasts, businesswomen, performers – but you wouldn’t know it from the way the culture flattened them into clichés. What you’re left with is the sparkle of sequins and the creeping suspicion that someone’s story never got told properly.

Maybe that’s what makes these images so absorbing. They’re not just relics from the sleazy glamour of mid-century nightlife, they’re borderline fucking ghost traps. Each pose is baited with intention, ambition, maybe even rebellion, but the women themselves have long since vanished into the carpeted ether of second-rate clubs and seedy theatres. They lived lives of lipstick and late nights, of pretending they were having fun when maybe they weren’t. Or maybe they really were. The point is: we’ll never know. And that’s what makes the shadow flicker across the image.

One woman lounges on a padded stool like a Grecian statue repurposed for a nightclub flyer. Another stands defiantly, hips cocked, with the kind of confidence that says, I know exactly what you came here for — and I’m giving you just enough. In another, a woman peers over her shoulder, her expression unreadable — amused? exhausted? trapped? These aren’t just pin-ups, they’re stagecraft frozen mid-performance. The backdrops are blank or velvet-draped or absurdly theatrical, but each frame says the same thing: here was someone who performed her own myth every night — and left almost nothing behind but the pose.

While most of the following are of strippers from the 1960s, I have included a couple of respected burlesque dancers, whose work had considerable influence on both the exotic dancing and stripping worlds. Enjoy responsibly.