Lapdancer

In 1992, two years after graduating from NYU's photography program, Juliana Beasley, now 35, determined to supplement her meager income as a novice photographer in a competitive market and inspired by the thought of good money at flexible hours, embarked on an eight-year odyssey as a professional nude dancer. Specializing in "lapdances" -- in which a woman dances above a seated customer, erotically brushing against his body -- she worked in over two dozen strip clubs in the United States, from New York to Reno, dancing for twenty dollars a head, and sharing the rewards and pitfalls of the profession: good earnings, poor earnings, emotional and physical exhaustion, and an arrest for prostitution.

In time, she also began recording testimonies of the milieu, from managers, dancers, and club patrons, and to put to paper a record of her own hard-earned experience.