Candid photos from a Paris strip club locker room

“Every club has its own rhythm,” explains photographer Sofiya Loriashvili. Her latest photo series, Stripper Edition, is shot inside the strip clubs in Sint Maarten and Paris where she works, pulling back the curtain on the parts of the job audiences rarely see. For all the differences between clubs, there is always the same emotional divide between the stage and the backstage. “The moment you cross the door of the locker room, you put on a mask,” she continues. “Your walk changes, your facial expressions shift, even your voice. You slip straight into work mode.”

It’s this world behind the door that becomes the focus of Stripper Edition, as the Paris-based photographer takes us inside the intimate, glitter-specked locker rooms of her local club. “The locker rooms are what stay with me the most. They have a smell you can’t forget or find anywhere else. They look ‘glamorous’ at first glance, but they’re full of years and years of stories from hundreds of girls. I’ve found shoes covered in dust that must have been sitting there for years.”

Within the shots, dancers appear in contorted stretches across sofas or leaning into mirrors. Some are caught mid-routine, some simply resting with their earphones in after a shift. It’s an endurance that Loriashvili is drawn to. “I like photographing dancers, contortionists, or just women, because behind all of it there’s a level of work people can’t imagine. A lot of men completely underestimate this job – they’re often the same ones who end up overdrawn because they couldn’t resist our skills.”

Alongside the documentary images, Loriashvili shoots self-portraits at the end of each night – a ritual she’s maintained since she started dancing. “I think I need to see how I change. These photos are like a diary of my end-of-shift face – my looks, my makeup, my state,” she explains. It’s another layer of intimacy she adds to the work, one that has been met with a positive response from other dancers. She photographs colleagues she’s known for years, women she changes next to nightly, people who understand instinctively what she’s trying to document. Still, she admits there are performers she hasn’t approached yet. “There are many dancers I would love to photograph and still don’t dare ask.”

​​Loriashvili also turns her lens to the details that make up the life of the club: piles of mismatched Pleasers on the ground, half-drunk water bottles cluttering countertops, stickers peeling from locker doors. Her photos also tap into her longstanding obsession with interiors. “I grew up in Ukraine surrounded by apartments with pink or yellow walls, carpets hanging everywhere, and lacquered wooden furniture,” she says. “I’m obsessed with flashy and even tacky décors – leopard print, pink, glitter, velvet.” It’s these obsessions that play out in the details of her work, both in her existing projects and in Stripper Edition. “Photography has always helped me find my place and a reason to belong to things where I didn’t feel legitimate. Stripping does the opposite: it forces me to stop thinking. It’s a theatre where I only focus on my role. Both roles balance each other out and give me harmony.”

While this project sees the photographer take on the role as both a participant and an observer, it’s a series that began almost accidentally. In her second year of photography school, Loriashvili was told she needed to complete an internship. “I didn’t want to spend that time in an office, and I’d always wanted to dance – plus, I needed the money,” she says. One trial shift turned into a job, then soon Loriashvili was enveloped into the world, as she handed in her internship report titled How Stripping Helped Me Become a Better Photographer. It’s a space she’s continued to document ever since, and one she has no intention of leaving. “As long as I keep dancing, I’ll keep making pictures,” she tells Dazed.