Susan Meiselas began working on her series Carnival Strippers five decades ago, soon after turning 24. The year was 1972, and the photographer met a dark-haired stripper in the bathroom of a country fair. It was an encounter that “led to a journey of many returns,” as Meiselas describes it, and arguably one of the most significant photographic projects of the second half of the 20th century, which helped earn Meiselas membership to Magnum Photos.
The making of Carnival Strippers spanned four years and 15 different locations across America’s rural east coast as Meiselas followed the carnivals from town to town, documenting the lives of the dancers on stage and off. In 1976, the photographer collated the work into the historical photobook Carnival Strippers, re-released in 2003.
The publication blends photography and text to create what Meiselas describes as “a filmic approach inviting a total immersion”, a method enabling the photographer to explore a subject susceptible to voyeurism with complete distinction. “I had to imagine a different form to engage readers in the nuanced experience of the girl shows,” she reflects.
Carnival Strippers Revisited marks the third edition of the book. It comprises two separate publications: a revised version of Carnival Strippers complete with previously unpublished photographs, and a companion volume, Making Of, which provides an insight into the work’s creation. “For decades, no one has looked at the box from which this collection of archival materials came,” writes Meiselas in one of the texts. “Viewing it now, I can remember the endless hours leading from months into a year, transcribing words by hand, excerpting quotes from many conversations onto file cards, then sitting on the floor and weaving those cards between images to create a narrative context.”
Making Of provides an unprecedented insight into this process, comprising work prints, proofs with printer annotations, contact sheets, pages from Meiselas’ handwritten field notebook, selected correspondence with the project’s subjects, quotes from initial historical research, and typed transcriptions of extensive audio recordings. The inclusion of early colour images is particularly compelling given black-and-white photographs solely composed the original publication. More than anything, however, Carnival Strippers Revisited serves to emphasise the importance Meiselas has always placed on connecting with her subjects. As she articulates: “Making Of begins to peel back some of the layers, reclaiming my belief in the possibility of mutual engagement with both subjects and readers through photography.”