Product Description

Before it was a show business genre, burlesque was an attitude. It was parody, outrageousness, exaggeration, pastiche--even grotesquerie. If in 19th- and 20th-century America the term came to signify a variety show of light comedy, dance, and strip tease, eventually descending to a plateau of triviality, cheap sexuality, and predictable gaudy costumes, it has now--Woo Hoo! Ladies!--been resuscitated. (It's amazing what a feminist revolution can accomplish when pasties and sequins are introduced.) In New Burlesque, Katharina Bosse takes a trip across the United States to meet and document every proponent of the unabashed renaissance that she can get her camera lens around. Her colorful series of let-it-all-hang-out portraits of Babette la Fave, Kitten DeVille, Kitty Crimson, Ruby Darling, Dirty Martini, D'Milo, Starlet O'Hara, Scarlette Fever, Ursulina, and their many sisters give a wild, wicked stage to the very grown-up darlings of a new century. Whether pictured in a saloon or a kitchen, by the side of a country road or in front of a parking lot, these dames show it just how they please.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346240 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-02
• Released on: 2004-10-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Katharina Bosse was born in Finland, raised in Germany and now lives and works in New York. She studied at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld, Germany and was awarded a DAAD scholarship in 1994 and also the Agfa International Award for Photojournalism in 1997. She has exhibited work in group shows at such prestigious institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Her portraits have appeared in the New Yorker, Spin and the New York Times Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Not bad
This book is a good intro but lacks depth or a well rounded view. It is fine for what it is, but look elsewhere for expanded pictures or interviews, etc.

Beautiful... but brief
The images in this small book are beautiful photographs of modern burlesque dancers, but I was really hoping for more information than is provided in the very very brief section at the back of the book. Could've done better...

Portraits of Neo-Burlesque Queens.
This book is a photographic tribute to the new Queens of Burlesque. Each portrait captures luscious Burlesque performers in unusual surroundings. The afterward is a scholarly article on the photographs and the neo-burlesque revival, perhaps best appreciated by those with a background in art historical jargon. The photographs are stunning, and this book will likely be a collectors item in years to come, as you cannot see many of these performers in any other books. If you already own "The Bare Truth...Stars of Burlesque from the 40s & 50s" you should invest in this book--think of it as the contemporary companion volume. My only complaint is that the book was too short, and that I wish the format was larger--it would have been a lovely coffee-table book!