Jo Weldon's New York School of Burlesque

There are over ten thousand photos of burlesque performers in our flickr group. Check it out and add your own photos!

Brian Smith is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer whose photographs of celebtrities and personalities have graced the pages of uncountable newspapers and magazines, including his picture of Pope John Paul II on the cover of Newsweek. So it should come as no surprise that for years he has been traveling to a goat farm in Helendale and later to hotel showrooms in Las Vegas to photographs burlesque queens of the 1950s for the annual Striptease Reunion of the Burlesque Hall of Fame. What? It's true. We at the Burlesque Hall of Fame have been honored by many of the people who have taken an interest in the organization, its personalities, and its events. But it's fair to say that Brian, with his talent, his reputation, his kindness, and his appreciation, ranks uber high in those honors! I met Brian on a photo shoot for which I'd been hired to bring burlesque models for a promotional project for photographic equipment. I was so charmed, really touched, by his enthusiasm and ...

Try shooting us from the front first! Then pick the pictures that look good enough to help us get other bookings and not the ones that show off your technique, give us copies of those incredibly flattering and well-executed shots, and THEN ask us about backstage. You can see some of my backstage shots here: http://burlesquescrapbook.blogspot.com / I'll also be taking a slide show of backstage shots with me for my book tour. Ask me anything about Burlesque!

Last fall I reviewed Lisa Kereszi's book, Fantasies. Burlesque continues to inspire visual artists, as it always has! There is a new interview with Lisa at Photoeye, one of my favorite photography websites. Also, Lisa's photo of my roommate, Julie Atlas Muz ( who is a visual artist as well as one of everybody's favorite burlesque performers, is in a new exhibition. The exhibition's press release: Sexy and the City New York Photographs July 9, 2009­August 28, 2009 Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce Sexy and the City, a summer group show on view from Thursday, July 9, through Friday, August 28, 2009. Sexy and the City shows the alluring, romantic and sometimes scandalous side of New York¹s people and places. Capturing private, intimate moments and blatant displays of sexuality, these photographs span the decades from the 1940s to the present day, taken in landmark locations like the Brooklyn Bridge and in the quiet, out-of-the-way corners of the city. ...

We now have over 1000 members in the Flickr group I moderate with Dale Harris.I'm looking at fan dance photos while preparing to wrap up my chapter on fandancing for my book project . Miss Indigo Blue, photographed in Seattle by Chris Blakely. Gal Friday, photographed in Washington DC by Mowabby. Kira Hula-la, photographed in Sydney by Kristin Elsby. Michelle L'Amour, photographed by Phantom Kitty. Fan Dance in China, submitted by Koolpix. Thank you to all the amazing photographers and performers who make this group so beautiful. Check out the group! Posted by Jo Weldon, Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque , for burlesquedaily.blogspot.com .

All photos in this review are the intellectual property of Lisa Kereszi. I first became aware of Lisa's work when I saw this beautiful image of Julie Atlas Muz, taken in 2000, in BUST magazine in 2002: At that time I was photographing shows in a sort of impressionistic fashion, trying to give a sense of what it was like to attend a show without concentrating on the quality of the individual photographs. There was no flickr.com and it was difficult to describe the shows to people, so I ran several galleries on my website . Don Spiro and Laure Leber creating beautiful art images, and Norman Blake was taking journalistic shots, but at that time there weren't as many places to see images of burlesque shows. It was thrilling to see Lisa's images. The above image is from Show World , where the Va Va Voom Room played for awhile, and where Deb DeSalvo made her video for "Take It Off," the song she recorded for Jill Morley's documentary Stripped . I'm in the...