Gogo Dancers
Reportage on the gogo dancers, Privilege disco, Ibiza 2022
I spent three summers in Ibiza as a photographer at Privilege disco, taking portraits of hundreds of party goers. Now I don’t want sound ungrateful or mean and say the job didn’t satisfy me in a lot of ways, but it’s also true that it let others areas unfulfilled, the more intimate and personal ones. I realized that what happened on the dance floor and glamorous podiums had little to do with that was going on backstage. The dressing rooms of go-go dancers and drag queens hold a lot more interest than the actual dance floor, filed to brim with coordinately happy people.
So I went to the backstage
What I found was a kind unstable, uneasy, heavy, even, atmosphere. I found something there worth capturing, something that seemed to me more ‘real’, if you allow me to use such a term.
I spent hours roaming the hallways and dressers, trying to get the right moment at times striving for invisibility. There, euphoria and joy shook hands with vacant and utter boredom, the fragile limit between them and only a voice ordering someone it was there time to go on. The sheer amount of suggestive details, mirrors and shapes and outlines, helped express the shifting mood of the place; this was what attracted me to it, this was what i tried to capture on film.