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Photography Eva ZarJuly 24, 2026Art & Photography / LightboxArt & Photography / LightboxIn pictures: New York’s strippers at home, work and play

Eva Zar’s ongoing photo series, God is a Stripper, celebrates the majesty, power and duality of the city’s striptease artists

ShareLink copied ✔️July 24, 2026July 24, 2026Text Emily Dinsdale Eva Zar, God is a Stripper

Gallery / 18 images

“Being a stripper is the purest form of performance,” says New York-based photographer Eva Zar. “You literally invent a version of yourself… a customer desires you, falls in love with you and spends money on you. It’s this interesting paradox where something that feels transcendent – this sexual, sacred saint of a woman – meets a very literal financial transaction.”

Despite the gentrification of pole dancing by hobbyists on TikTok, strip clubs remain contested spaces which continue to weave a particular species of fascination, built on potent elements of performance, magic, money, beauty, sexuality and power. For many, it’s a realm of fantasy which requires customers to suspend their disbelief at the door – it’s perfunctory and transactional, yet also a kind of illusion.

“When you think about it, the strip club becomes this very exaggerated, hyper visual of the world we live in: we all present ourselves in certain ways to be devoured, loved, accepted. We’re all exchanging something for something else,” she says. “The club is just a really honest representation of that. A customer comes in, pays for pleasure, and receives an experience.”

Photography Eva Zar

Born in Vienna but relocating to NYC at the crossroads of her late teens and early 20s, Zar has documented many different subcultures over the last decade; she’s slept with wolves, followed trans women riding on horseback through the Californian desert, attended 72-hour raves and more. But her most all-encompassing photo series so far has been God Is A Stripper, an ongoing homage to New York’s strippers. Zar has spent hundreds of hours hanging out with dancers and photographing them – not just in the clubs and dressing rooms, but in their homes, in their cars, in the places that constitute their “real lives” as opposed to the fantasy factory of a strip club. She’s fascinated by their entire kingdoms.

“There’s of course such a strong connection between the strip club and the strippers, but these girls live outside of the walls of the strip club, just like you and me,” she tells Dazed. It felt important for her to take pictures of the dancers in their homes – especially the sanctuary of their bedrooms – because it’s the space where they feel most unguarded. Our bedrooms are often an extension of ourselves. “[Being at home is] the exact opposite of performing for someone else. You literally dream there,” she says. “As a photographer, when I walk into someone’s space, even if I don’t know them well yet, suddenly I’m inside this tiny universe they built for themselves. It’s fascinating and very special.”

Whereas so many photo projects about strip clubs focus on exposing the “reality” of life as a stripper – delving beyond the glitter and the costumes to look at the grime and chaos of the dressing rooms, the tampons, hair tongs, dry shampoo and baby wipes – Zar’s pictures are romantic; a softcore sheen of Vaseline on the lens. “I absolutely love that you see the photographs as romantic,” she says. “I think reality can also be romantic.” She objects to the idea that docu-style photographs should achieve the vestige of so-called authenticity by casting a harsh eye on their subjects. In God is a Stripper, Zar resists what she describes as “this ‘look at this poor messy girl, she has to use her body’ narrative, where the photographer with a capital P walks into a space and exposes something”.

Photography Eva Zar

Eschewing a posture of objectivity, Zar chooses to treat her subjects with dignity. The reverence of her approach is refreshing in an era which so often prefers the point-and-shoot hard flash. “When you think about it, we as photographers have a unique gift that we can quite literally show others how we see the world,” she says. “I created a world for myself where there is romance and softness because I’ve been through so much darkness. I don’t think that makes my subjects, or me, any less fierce or strong. You can be aware of reality and choose to see the beauty in it and shape that version. The girls are creating this fairytale version of themselves that customers project their fantasies onto. I love photographing them just like that.”

Zar has so much to say – both on the record and very much off it – about the time she has spent with dancers while making this ongoing project. She has also learned a lot about herself; she’s addressed her own vulnerabilities and considered her own agency, and she’s reflected deeply on many of the contradictions, questions and problems inherent in the strip club, both ideologically and practically. “Society wants [women] to keep these things so separate: if you want to be rich, you can’t be spiritual. If you crave sexual pleasure, you can’t be a ‘good’ person. If you perform a role, you can’t be sincere. But there’s so much more nuance; two truths can be true at the same time. God Is A Stripper is about allowing all of these dualities to exist in the same person, same space and same photograph.”

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