Review: New Burlesque

Dear Constant Reader, This is one of the first books I acquired about burlesque and it’s been sitting on the shelf, unreviewed. Get ready for a trip back to the early days of the burlesque revival. New Burlesque by Katharina Bosse, 2003. This is a collection of 38 portraits of neo-burlesque performers taken when the burlesque revival was heating up. In all of them the performers are in costume, but the settings are not performance venues. The dancers are posed mostly outdoors. I recognized some taken in the dessert at Exotic World (like the cover image of Kitten de Ville), some in New Orleans, and at least one in Los Angeles. Some of the indoor shots are in houses, probably the performer’s own. The outdoor photos are brilliantly sun-lit, so much so that the subjects seem a little washed out, where I might have expected more saturated color. Each photograph has the performer’s name calligraphed on the facing page and a line-art icon somewhat associated with them. If this book were…