Lisa Kereszi's first monograph, Fantasies, interweaves images of the empty interiors of strip clubs with photographs of new burlesque dancers to create a narrative in between the environment of a fantasy and the expression of one. The tawdry nocturnal spaces are an emotional void, paralleling the possible emptiness of those who occupy the stages of the strip clubs, as well as those who fill the seats as patrons. According to Kereszi, the new burlesque performances have a more palpable joy than stripper routines, but Kereszi's images of the burlesque dancers in persona still exude a certain sadness and a reality that is rough around the edges. Kereszi draws back the curtain on fantasy and reveals its details, enticing the imagination of the viewer, yet simultaneously exposing the reality of fantasy's ephemeral nature.

Larissa Leclair: What is Burlesque and this new burlesque movement that you have captured in your photographs?

Lisa Kereszi: Burlesque is more about comedy and the art of the tease than today's standard, typical gentlemen's club stripping... Burlesque seemed to come out of this Vaudeville/comedy tradition. In between Gypsy Rose Lee or Tempest Storm doing an elaborate practiced funny routine there would be a comedian, there would be male performers, there would be magic, and there would be any number of other sorts of entertainment that all kind of go together... The new Burlesque movement is this revival of the 50's style — not sanitized strip tease, but something more joyful and more about a fuller form of entertainment and comedy rather than just the money shot. It is not about the "money shot." It's all leads up to a finale. Most of the routine is getting up until that point and then when she takes her bra off and you see her pasties, then it is over. It is all buildup, usually to a funny end — a joke. So these girls doing new burlesque are huge fans of those women that were doing it back then, like Jennie Lee and Dixie Evans, who was the Marilyn Monroe of burlesque. It seems like a lot of them came out of a couple different underground scenes. One of them is the rockabilly scene and some of these people went into doing swing dance, and now burlesque. The more punk rock/underground part of it went drag and then went into burlesque. There is the drag-East Village-punk rock scene. One of the girls I photographed, World Famous *BOB*, was telling me that in the mid-90s before she got into this more specific new burlesque thing she was performing at gay clubs in the East Village doing performance art-ish, freaky routines. Sexy routines. That audience was gay men. Yeah, it is titillating, but it is not exactly stripping. Now, yes, there are a lot of straight men but there are gay men and there are tons of women in the audience, and straight women. And you can see that in some of the pictures.

LL: Are there some clubs where the line between burlesque and stripping is blurred?

Kereszi: I have been out of the scene for three or four years. Within the last few years, there are some clubs that have straddled that line. There are highbrow strip clubs that have burlesque. Even before it had come out as this big thing that celebrities were doing — like the Pussycat dolls in L.A...

LL: ...the art of strip tease has become a popular aerobic exercise...

Kereszi: ...yeah, go-go aerobics. There is obviously a relationship between these different worlds and there are crossovers. In New Orleans, there's this woman Gio, who's been stripping for a long time but she's the best at what she does, and she knows the history and comes out of this Burlesque tradition. So she does her strip routine in a much more practiced, burlesque way. Also, at Miss Exotic World Contest, which the outdoor photos are from, in the desert in California, most of the people were of this sort of new burlesque movement. But then there were a few women where you could tell had implants, and just the way they moved and the way they took their clothes off you could tell they were working in strip clubs. And I think a lot of women doing this are very post-feminist, pro-woman, pro-sex worker. There was this thing called the Sex Workers' Art Show, and some of these same performers went all over the country and performed at colleges and lots of different clubs. Some of them are burlesque people and some of them are like Annie Sprinkle — sex/art people. And there were also women who straddle that line between doing something for a living, to make money, but also liked being feminist about it. In my head I see a line drawn, though others would disagree. In the book there are two different projects that were made at the same time. For the most part, these strip clubs I photographed are strip clubs, and the only times that there was a crossover in the places I photographed was the place Show World, which was actually the first place I shot. And that was on Times Square, a circus-themed strip club, and the downstairs was still allowed to be video booths and a sex shop. But because of the Giuliani laws, they couldn't have live girls anymore. But since burlesque was arty, that's where the Va Va Voom Room, a local traveling show, had their performances for a short time. A friend of mine brought me to see his friend Dirty Martini perform and to see this insane place because he knew that I photographed empty interiors.

LL: So the empty interiors are from strip clubs - the images without the women. And the ones of the women are the new burlesque dancers.

Kereszi: I was a little bit uncomfortable putting the two worlds together because I wasn't sure how it would be received - also how it would be received by the women in the pictures. But so far so good. I think the women I've talked to about it are pro-women and pro-sex worker — these women are full of joy but there is a sadness too. It's not just a sadness in burlesque dancers, it's a sadness or a loneliness or a neediness that is human, and present in so many people...

It was not my idea to put these together. It was the idea of the person who helped me sequence the book- who made the book happen - Alice Rose George. She saw this link happening in the work years ago, and she helped make the work even exist and happen in the first place. She always saw a relationship. But I get very nervous — maybe even conservative — too black and white about things... She seemed to see something else in it and how the pictures worked together to create some other sort of statement.

LL: You mentioned the history of burlesque and striptease a bit. I was just recently looking at Carnival Strippers [by Susan Meiselas]. How does that work relate to your contemporary study?

Kereszi: I hadn't seen that work until I was already working on the project. And Alice knew Susan and said you need to see this book. When the book was re-released — that's when I saw it. And I loved it. I thought it was totally amazing. I also have this interest in Coney Island and sideshows, and magic. Susan found this world where two of these things that I am interested in are together. And I didn't know until I saw the book that at sideshows they would have a stripper tent. I love that work and it influenced me to a degree after I saw it, but I had already been working on the project for several years. Alice said "you should meet Susan and show her your work," but that never worked out. The 60s, when that work was made, were a transitional time and those women were definitely more akin to working strippers today. It's a job. Some of them probably don't want to be there, and some of them probably do, at least for a while. And some of them who do probably want to be there don't really want to be there. I just saw the Meiselas show at ICP, and luckily found the Carnival Strippers work hidden downstairs in a back corner — which I kind of liked, but also felt that it was odd to put all that violence right out there, and to hide the sex in a dark, tiny room with a warning sign at the entrance. The show had the recordings she made of interviews with the dancers playing. Hearing those words and looking at the pictures edited, there is no question that it was rough and tumble and a very depressing world to be a part of. They did it out of need. What is going on today in burlesque is much more like performance art. No one's getting paid very much, except maybe Dita Von Teese.

LL: Were you able to or interested in photographing in Las Vegas?

Kereszi: I have been there a few times. I was mostly photographing empty interiors and night landscapes. The only performers I photographed there were Elvis impersonators. I wasn't interested in the big Vegas showgirl thing. I have thought to try and get permission to photograph the stages empty, but I was never interested in the Moulin Rouge type of big show. The number of people on stage may be visually too polished. It becomes a spectacle more than a single focus.

The museum of burlesque is now there, Exotic World. Two wonderful people rescued it from deterioration in the desert in California and they moved it from the desert. Vegas is the perfect place for it because now, like the Liberace Museum, there is now the burlesque hall of fame. This year the Miss Exotic World contest was at the Palms Casino, and I was one of the judges. It was very different, but it's in a totally appropriate place and links up with the showgirl stuff and old Hollywood.

LL: Let's talk about the photograph "Kitten de Ville posing with her trophy, Exotic World, Helendale, CA 2002." I am struck at how all the women are on stage, and all the men are photographing. Were women photographers outnumbered by men?

Kereszi: They were. There were women photographers. Katharina Bosse was there. She did a book called New Burlesque. There were probably a couple other girls, but it was a lot of men...

Part of the reason why I stopped the project was the sheer number of photographers — male or female. I started the project in 1999, and according to World Famous *BOB*, the scene was just started in NY in 94 -95. There were only a couple people doing stuff before that. I started the project in 99 and I think the last picture I took was 03. By 03, it was getting too popular. You're elbowing, and you just can't get in there. I'm not aggressive and I don't want to stand where everyone else is standing anyway, but it is still hard. And even in the dressing room where I was used to being the only person - there would be two or three people back there, and I was just kind of done. This picture is about that to a degree. Having studied here at Yale... and having studied Garry Winogrand and how he looked at things - the book Public Relations - looking at the press and photographers as something separate from himself and looking at things from behind, is definitely what influenced me to take this picture.

LL: You mentioned in your essay in the book that the women's magazine Bust published images from this project rather than the men's magazine [to whom] you originally pitched [the work]. Can you talk about the audience for this work as well as the audience you found at many of these performances?

Kereszi: I heard a couple of comments that I wasn't supposed to hear about the women in this book being ugly. Someone said something like "Oh, they're naked ladies, but they're ugly." And I was shocked when that was relayed to me. I don't think that at all, but I could see why a regular guy who is used to this air-brushed, silicone implant thing - that's what they want to see naked today. That wasn't the case when burlesque was queen in the fifties. So it's a different kind of guy, I think, that likes this world, and a different kind of person in general. Living in New York and being an artist, you are not really aware of the real world. And this seems much bigger to me than I think it really might be; it is a subculture, it is still an underground thing even if it is popular. The people that are making it popular on TV are Carmen Electra, who looks really skinny and beautiful and perfect. She doesn't seem to have the same charge that these women have.

Basically what happened was that Alice Rose George was the director of photography at Details in 2000. ... She asked me to pitch something and I said that the new burlesque movement would be great for Details. I told her, these girls are doing this new burlesque thing and there's a convention in New Orleans and a contest in California that I could go to plus the stuff that's going on in New York. She said yes — we will pay you day rates for a certain number of days and we'll pay all your expenses. And when I got back, over a three-month period, she edited these pictures ... and it just sat there and sat there because she couldn't convince anyone there. And then she left. Then the subsequent editors hired me for other jobs, and they kept it on the shelf. Then those women at the magazine moved on. And then finally, maybe '03 or '02 someone said they "Lisa, sorry, these bodies are not really the kind of bodies people are going to want to look at in Details." They were female editors and said we love the work but we cannot convince anyone here to let us run them. So they gave the work back to me and I called Bust magazine right away because I knew that they would run it, and they did...

LL: How did you come to work with the publisher Damiani?

Kereszi: It was through Alice. I actually knew about Damiani because Larry Fink is involved with them and came and lectured here. He said to the students, "I want to see work because I'm working as a consultant with this publisher. They are looking for book ideas." I think I did send Larry, who was once my teacher, a CD or prints but then nothing happened. And I don't remember if I sent him the burlesque stuff or other stuff - I don't remember what I did. Alice is also a consultant to Damiani. It all happened really quickly. I sent the work to Larry, nothing happened. Then in September/October of 2007 Alice said, "Do you still have all that work? Come over, let's spread it out on the floor and sequence it. Damiani has an opening in their Spring '08 catalogue." ... So we threw together a dummy, I made an Apple iBook and she sent it to Italy. Then back and forth for only a week or two and then they said "Yes, but add more pictures." So then we had to add more pictures, pick a cover, and ask Lynne Tillman to agree to write an essay for trade. The next thing I know I'm going to Italy at Thanksgiving to go to press, and then the book came out March 1st. So it all happened really quickly. I wished I had more time. With the Nazraeli book I had more time to edit it with more care. But maybe being spontaneous and off the cuff works just as well.

LL: What work is Nazraeli going to publish?

Kereszi: It will be a collection of just my details and empty interiors; something poetic and not so specific. Fantasies is very specific to a project but I want the new book to be broader and the work linked by something else, some other feeling.

LL: Looking at the book on the train, I stared to feel a little bit self-conscious after I thought about me being in the real world looking at these images.

Kereszi: This is fantasyland, this is not the real world...