23-year-old Melbourne-based photographer Morganna Magee is certainly a name to keep an eye on. Since graduating from the two-year course at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE with a major in photojournalism, her work has already received attention and awards both in and outside Australia, most notably this vivid Showgirls series taken while hanging out backstage at a local strip. The opportunity presented itself because Morganna had a friend working on the door.
When a notice was pinned up in the changing room outlining her intentions, a few of the girls asked that they be shot only from the back. 'But most of them were showgirls who had been in Penthouse etc, so they weren't fussed about their image being out there.' When she began her 20 shoots of 1-2 hours over a six-month period, she 'shot everything'. Then she started getting to know the girls, who were about her age and not the cliché she'd expected. 'I had a romantic image of strippers being sad and sort of tired,' she says, 'and they're aware of that perception and how people judge them.
In fact, they were as happy as anyone. Their attitude was that they were just making money.' Here better than anyone Morganna captures the real women behind the fantasy and the banal reality behind this very modern industry’s glamorous façade.
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