Heaven is a Strip Club is Rachel Lena Esterline’s first exhibition with Benrubi Gallery. With the work, Esterline seeks to shatter stereotypes surrounding sex work and lift the deadly stigma surrounding the occupation. “Disinterested in the salacious and superficial, her ethereal portrayals of women are unapologetically beautiful celebrations of women who take off their clothes for a living,” writes the gallery in a statement.

Growing up, Esterline had been conditioned by her father––a Christian pastor––to understand strippers as downtrodden women with few prospects. Young and rebellious, Esterline first visited a strip club 18 years ago when she was auditioning to be an entertainer. She didn’t get hired, but 13 years later she walked back into that same club with a camera. The feelings of shame and sadness her upbringing told her to feel toward the strippers was replaced by admiration and respect; she saw the women as pillars of strength in charge of their own destinies.

Over the past five years, Esterline has attended college graduations, baby showers and art openings with the women she photographs at work, the women she now calls her sisters.

“I felt so comfortable and confident that this was my purpose in life––to tell the stories of these women from the radical position of respect,” recalls Esterline of her first encounter with the women in 2013. “Capturing the life and hustle of these women has been a life-affirming experience where I have discovered community, ambition, goddess and art.”

Heaven is a Strip Club
By Rachel Lena Esterline
Benrubi Gallery
Through November 10, 2018