Shot between 1991 and 1993 inside the "Private Pleasures" booth of San Francisco’s Lusty Lady Theater, Cammie Toloui’s Lusty Lady project—later released as the photobook 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes—offers a rare insider’s perspective on the performative and transactional aspects of sex work. During this period, Toloui, a photojournalism student at San Francisco State University, worked as a stripper to finance her education. Her dual identity as both observer and performer offered a unique vantage point, allowing her to photograph her customers, exchanging a discounted or free dildo show for the opportunity to document their candid reactions.
The early 1990s represented a period just prior to the internet revolution, providing Toloui's subjects a rare degree of anonymity that facilitated genuine emotional transparency. Her photographs turned the apparatus of the male gaze back onto its subjects, interrogating its dominance by making male desire the object of observation. Rather than the women typically featured in sexualized contexts, Toloui deliberately focused her lens on male vulnerability, capturing private expressions of desire and exposing less visible dimensions of masculinity. Her artistic intent was multifaceted: a direct critique of patriarchal and capitalist structures underlying sex work, an exploration of sexual taboos, and a reflective meditation on personal experiences within the sex industry.
Visually, Toloui’s black-and-white photographs are defined by dramatic, baroque-like lighting. Compositions frame subjects behind glass barriers, with reflections occasionally revealing Toloui herself, subtly blurring boundaries between observer and participant. The explicit presence of clocks in several images underscores the commercial and transient nature of these exchanges. To accommodate the booth’s dim interior, she employed high-speed black-and-white film (T-Max pushed to 6400 ISO), producing grainy, raw images that deepened the project’s sense of documentary realism.
First shown selectively in the group exhibition Bad Girls (New Museum, New York, 1994), the series has since been presented at institutions including SFMOMA and Tate Modern, and was finally issued as the photobook 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes (Void, 2021). More recent solo presentations in Paris, Marseille, and Athens followed the book’s release. Toloui’s broader practice has been recognized with honors such as the New York Times Award for Excellence in Photojournalism and the Greg Robinson Memorial Photojournalism Scholarship.
First introduced selectively in the group exhibition Bad Girls (New Museum, New York, 1994), the series has since been exhibited at major institutions such as SFMOMA and Tate Modern, and was ultimately consolidated in the photobook 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes (Void, 2021).
