The Shoreditch Triangle is a small area just north of London’s financial district known for its strip clubs. It’s also the name of Swedish photographer Jenny Nordquist’s project documenting the interiors of these clubs, stripped of their dancers and punters.
“I didn’t know there were so many of these spaces,” says Nordquist. “Two of them are within 50 metres of my house. I used to feel that I had to travel to find interesting things to photograph, and I’ve realised that I have these places surrounding me.”
Without the the distraction of naked flesh, the clubs reveal a fascinating variety of decor, from the kitschy Caesar’s Palace pomp of Venus, above, to the “strip pubs”, where the apparatus of poledancing has been retrofitted onto Victorian lounges.
Is the architecture part of the experience here, or something that they want to be invisible? Whatever the approach, none of the spaces fully escape the air of seediness – literally, says Nordquist.
“It’s a bit like coming into a pub when they’ve just opened, sometimes you can smell what happened yesterday,” she says. “They have these kind of traces of what’s been going on. Maybe you don’t realise when they’re full and the music’s going, you don’t see the crappiness of them.”
www.jennynordquist.com
